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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

And let me put it very bluntly to my colleagues: A vote for Robert Kennedy for this position is a vote for a sicker America. And there is irony in that judgment, considering Mr. Kennedy is the figurehead of a mass movement known as Make America Healthy Again. But on issue after issue, Mr. Kennedy refused to stand up for policies that will keep Americans healthy and out of the hospital.

From vaccines to affordable health insurance, to lower drug prices, to women's reproductive healthcare, Mr. Kennedy--through several hearings--ducked and dodged and weaved instead of answering the basic questions that came from Senators of both parties. When he did answer, he demonstrated a shocking lack of knowledge about the Federal health programs he would be charged with running and a willful desire to mislead Senators about his views on science matters like vaccine safety.

The only conclusion I am left with is that he stands steadfastly by the outlandish views he has expressed over his two-decade career as an anti-vaccine crusader, and he is fully prepared to implement the Republican healthcare agenda.

That agenda boils down to putting Big Pharma and insurance companies back in charge, while leaving millions of American families to fend for themselves without affordable care.

And I want to be clear about this. Going back to my days as director of the Gray Panthers, which is what I did before I went into public service, I can just tell you, this is the least qualified nominee to ever be nominated for a position of this importance. So for the next day and night, Senate Democrats are going to be on the floor telling the American people why.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle still have an opportunity to turn away from this dangerous path. If they do not, my view is their legacy will be tarnished by setbacks in science that will echo in America for decades.

As I mentioned, I spent countless hours as a young man working with seniors to navigate the newly created Medicare Program and help them avoid predatory insurance company tactics that remain all too common today. To me and many other Americans, healthcare, colleagues, is the most important issue, because if you and your loved ones don't have their health, everything else goes by the boards.

The reality is we need to make sure that Americans have the best and most affordable healthcare possible, rather than having a handful of healthcare companies gobble up the entire market for health insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and even doctors.

The results have been great for shareholder profits and disastrous for American families. Costs keep climbing. The act of getting a doctor's appointment or filing an insurance claim seems to have become an Olympic sport in much of America. The system delays and denies care and rakes in profits, while patients are left wondering how they are going to get the care they need.

So the question before the Senate now is whether we want America's chief health officer to be somebody who is going to take on those corporate interests, somebody who is going to fight tooth and nail to lower costs and improve care, somebody who is going to work to protect and improve the Federal healthcare programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on and not gut them.

Everything I have seen and heard from Mr. Kennedy over these last few weeks has led me, colleagues, to conclude he is not the person that America needs. Americans have little reason to take Mr. Kennedy at his word. They do, however, have every reason to believe Mr. Kennedy will continue to embrace and amplify anti-vaccine programs, every reason to believe that he will back up Donald Trump's abortion bans. Every reason to believe that he will be a rubberstamp for the Republican health agenda that would rip away the healthcare of so many Americans.

Over the course of the rest of the day and through the night, Democrats are going to show the American people why these concerns are so serious.

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