After Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed a lone lawmaker for what he described as the nation’s public health crisis, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) struck back.
“You’ve presided here, I think, for 32 years,” Secretary Kennedy told Senator Murray, the Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on Tuesday. “You presided over the destruction of the health of the American people. Our people are now the sickest people in the world,” he alleged in his sweeping indictment.
Senator Murray had asked Kennedy, “whose decision was it to withhold Child Care and Development Block Grant funding?” but he attacked the Washington Democrat in a heated back-and-forth.
“You came here to argue with me,” Murray said at the end of the exchange. “I came here to ask you questions about your budget request. Your budget request is asking us to cut dramatically, but I am also making the point that Senator Baldwin made that what you are doing right now is enacting your budget that Congress has not passed by cutting critical funding across the board. And I think this committee will find that to be very detrimental on the future.”
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Murray also told Kennedy, “you said last week, quote, ‘We were not cutting thousands of scientists. We are not cutting clinical trials, but I want you to know, in the last four months, you fired or pushed out nearly 5,000 NIH staff and terminated more than 1,600 NIH grants. That includes more than 240 clinical trials across the country. So whose decision was it to fire scientists and terminate these NIH grants and the clinical trial?”
Kennedy responded, “Senator, I don’t trust your information, with all due respect,” before the exchange again grew heated.
On social media, Senator Murray blasted the HHS Secretary.
“RFK Jr. is a shameless liar and, candidly, an insane conspiracy theorist,” Murray wrote. “He’s fired the people who monitor bird flu. He’s fired food safety inspectors. He’s firing NIH clinical staff—and he’s cutting cancer research. This grifter is making America LESS healthy & LESS safe.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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