Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded forcefully Wednesday to Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, following her harsh criticism of his leadership.
In her opening remarks to a House Appropriations Committee hearing, Democrat ranking member DeLauro asserted that under Kennedy’s budget proposal, which calls for less spending than under the Biden administration, “Americans would die from needless and preventable deaths.”
The congresswoman then got more personal, saying to Kennedy, “By promoting quackery, we are endangering the health of the American people with pseudo-science, fearmongering, and misinformation.”
During his testimony, RFK Jr. reminded DeLauro that she’s been talking for years about the dangers of artificial food dyes, but he actually took action regarding it.
“You say that you’ve worked for 20 years on getting food dye out. Give me credit. I got it out in 100 days,” he said.
“I’ll give you that credit,” DeLauro responded.
“All right, so let’s work together and do something that we all believe in, which is have healthy kids in our country, for God’s sake,” Kennedy replied. “There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. There’s just kids, and we should all be concerned with them.”
DeLauro also became upset with Kennedy over his plans to reorganize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by eliminating some offices within it.
“Allow me to answer that by pointing out the absolute cataclysmic disorganization of this agency under your oversight for 40 years,” the secretary responded.
“We had nine separate offices of women’s health. When we consolidate them, the Democrats say we’re eliminating them — we’re not. We’re still appropriating the $3.7 billion, but we’re not keeping all nine.”
He listed other examples of multiple separate offices, including eight to address minority health, 27 for HIV, and 59 for behavioral health programs.
Additionally, during the hearing, Kennedy testified concerning school lunches, saying, “We took the Biden guidelines, which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry. They were incomprehensible …”
“We are changing that. We’re going to have four pages of dietary guidelines that tell people essentially, ‘Eat whole food. Eat the food that’s good for you. That’s going to drive changes in the school lunch program,” he added.
Kennedy noted that he’s been touring Head Start facilities and finding that “everything they eat is in a package, and it is just loaded with sugar and with chemicals.”
“We’re poisoning this generation. Eight hundred thousand kids — the poorest kids in the country — and we’re starting them out with this count against them — with, you know, diabetes, pre-diabetes,” the secretary said, elaborating that about one-third of American youths are diabetic or pre-diabetic.
