On Senate Floor, Senator Hassan Speaks Out About Danger RFK Jr. Poses to Families and Public Health

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) today voted against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Yesterday, Senator Hassan delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate to highlight Kennedy’s lack of basic knowledge about the health care programs that he would oversee which help millions of Americans, his history of promoting dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, his recent reversal on reproductive rights, and his complete absence of qualifications to lead such a critical department. Click here to see Senator Hassan’s remarks.

Key quotes from Senator Hassan:

• “Mr. Kennedy has spent his lifetime arguing for a woman’s reproductive freedom. But he now abandons what he used to refer to as a core value for a title, and for what he apparently thinks is more important than freedom – being in Donald Trump’s orbit. Americans have a particular disdain for those who sell out the freedom of their fellow citizens in pursuit of power. We call such people many things; we seldom call them Mr. Secretary.”

• “No one in this body would hire even an entry-level health care staffer who did not understand the basics of Medicaid and Medicare. Why should we exercise a different, weaker standard for the person who is supposed to be in charge of both? Why, with this Administration, does the bar go even lower when the office becomes even higher? If Mr. Kennedy cannot be bothered to learn the basics about Medicare and Medicaid, he will certainly not bother to stand up for them.”

• “He hides his anti-vaccine conspiracies under a cloak of deniability. Sometimes he outright lies. But most of the time he insists that he is merely raising questions and that he is simply a man looking for answers. […] It is fine to ask questions; it’s often urgently important. But it’s not doctors who are ignoring Mr. Kennedy’s questions. It is Mr. Kennedy who is ignoring their answers.”

• “The problem is not that Mr. Kennedy is asking uncomfortable questions. The problem is that Mr. Kennedy himself is not willing to accept the answers to them. The problem is that Mr. Kennedy is wasting our time and our money with dishonest and already settled debates, debates that distract us from the task at hand – the task of tackling the real and significant health problems that are facing our country. Because in his lifetime of fearmongering, what good has Mr. Kennedy actually contributed to the mission of public health? Mr. Kennedy says he wishes to make America healthy again. But when Mr. Kennedy suggested that the polio vaccine gave people cancer, what child did he make healthier?”

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