Ranking Member DeLauro at Democratic Hearing on Trump Admin.’s Public Health Destruction: “They are walking away from public health.”
WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) delivered the following remarks at the Democratic Hearing examining the consequences of the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and our entire public health system:
Good morning,
Thank you all for being here.
I especially want to thank this hearing’s witnesses, Dr. Ashish Jha, Dr. Anne Schuchat, and Dr. Manisha Juthani for joining us today—and for helping to sound the alarm on the consequences for the health and well-being of the American people of the Trump Administration’s dismantling and destruction of our nation’s public health system.
I also thank all of the members of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee for prioritizing oversight and joining this hearing today.
I have called today’s hearing because the Republican majority has yet to hold the Trump Administration accountable for its wanton destruction. Elon Musk, President Trump, and RFK Jr. are gutting the lifesaving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies—while Republicans in the Congress say and do nothing. They are walking away from public health.
The American people are demanding help with the cost of living. But President Trump is not laser focused on the cost-of-living crisis—he is actually making it worse.
He promised to fight for the working-class, but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government. Elon Musk and President Trump are recklessly, and unlawfully, freezing and stealing Congressionally-appropriated funds from a wide swath of agencies, programs, and services across the government that serve the American people.
And now, they are attacking public health to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. We need the government to fight for the middle-class, the working-class, and the vulnerable.
Instead, the Administration and Republicans in Congress are destroying the crown jewel of public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This is happening today—right now. We are not talking about hypothetical cuts or what-ifs or worst-case scenarios. This destruction has happened, and is happening, today.
CDC saves lives by rapidly identifying and responding to serious health threats — including infectious disease outbreaks, toxic pollutants, and food-borne illness — as well as by preventing the emergence or spread of health threats, including chronic diseases, before they harm us.
In a matter of weeks, Elon Musk, President Trump, and Secretary Kennedy have irreparably damaged America’s health, current and future. As part of their drastic and haphazard purge of CDC, they are eliminating entire divisions without consideration for who will pick up the work or how they will do it.
But the destruction of HHS is not limited to CDC. Musk, Trump, and Kennedy are eliminating entire agencies that have saved the lives of someone near to each and every one of us. This is not roads, bridges, helicopters. This is people’s lives. People have died.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), eliminated.
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), eliminated.
Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), eliminated.
Administration for Community Living (ACL), eliminated.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) – the world’s largest funder of lifesaving biomedical research, decimated.
HHS has closed half of its regional offices, which served 22 states and 5 territories. 20,000 HHS employees are gone.
And Republicans have set the stage to cut Medicaid benefits from people who rely on that program to see a doctor – including roughly half of our nation’s children.
For the programs and services that remain intact, at least on paper, they are making it more difficult to reach and acquire help. Elon Musk and DOGE are demanding HHS agencies slash their budgets by roughly one-third, which translates to tens of billions of dollars that fund critical services at the State and local levels. State and local health departments will be left unable to adequately care for their communities because of these cuts.
At CDC, DOGE has already fired 2,400 employees, as well as driven away more than a thousand employees by threatening their jobs.
Altogether, Elon Musk and RFK Jr. have pushed out more than one-third of CDC’s highly skilled public health workforce.
HHS has already terminated $11 billion in funding for State and local health departments, and DOGE is demanding CDC slash nearly $3 billion in grant funding, illegally cutting CDC’s annual discretionary budget by over 30 percent.
They are eliminating scores of CDC prevention programs, including HIV, tobacco, drowning, asthma, lead poisoning, and gun violence. Why on Earth are these the places that DOGE is searching for so-called waste? The life of a teenager that does not become addicted to cigarettes is not a waste.
Vaccine programs for millions of Americans, including children, so they do not get diseases, like measles, are not waste. Lead poisoning prevention, are you kidding me? These programs help save the lives of men and women and children from all walks of life in this country. This is not waste, fraud, and abuse.
Kennedy has gutted CDC offices that track the most urgent and alarming threats to public health—from HIV to cancer.
These offices collected data that allowed everyone from institutions, to community physicians, to parents, to make informed decisions about their families’ health. Without them, our public health experts will have no idea of what is taking place in their communities.
And under Kennedy’s watch, our country is now failing to contain vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles, a disease eradicated in the United States just decades ago has now claimed the lives of three Americans, and well over 800 are confirmed to have contracted the disease—all while Kennedy peddles unfounded and dangerous vaccine skepticism, and spreads lies and misinformation about people living with autism. He practices quackery.
The Administration has fired or pushed out thousands of experts and experienced staff who help keep Americans safe from global infectious diseases, including Measles, polio, HIV, tuberculosis, and Ebola.
Peter Marks, the country’s top vaccine regulator at the Food & Drug Administration, helped develop the COVID vaccines at record speed under the first Trump Administration.
Marks was told to resign or be fired. In his resignation letter, Marks wrote that, quote, “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” end quote.
I am worried about a future public health crisis that emerges once the Trump Administration has fully dismantled CDC and the nation’s public health system. We are currently in the midst of an outbreak of avian influenza and the Trump Administration is doing nothing.
Make no mistake, there will be another infectious disease outbreak and this administration will be woefully unprepared.
We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis – driven in part by skyrocketing health care costs – and Elon Musk and President Trump are making it worse. I do not believe the American people want less cancer research and fewer people tracking infectious diseases, but that is exactly what the White House and Republicans aim to deliver.
Elon Musk, President Trump, and Secretary Kennedy are wreaking havoc at every level of our most critical public health institutions. They are jeopardizing our families’ health for the sake of billionaire tax cuts.
And we are now seeing pushback at every level. The public is outraged at the enormous harms DOGE has wrought.
Dozens of courts have put restraining orders on the Administration’s actions. But courts can only play defense. Republicans in Congress could stop the mayhem, the chaos, and destruction today if they wanted to. But they remain silent, petrified of the President’s scorn, revenge, and retaliation.
Those of us in elected office who know what is right and understand the harm being wrought on the American people—they need to stand up, not be afraid, this is the time to meet the moment.
As the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, I will never stop fighting against this dangerous dismantling of our public health system, which is jeopardizing the health, safety, and well-being of millions of American families.
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