‘The kind of carelessness that gets people killed’: Patty Murray decries RFK Jr.’s cuts at Health and Human Services Department

WASHINGTON – Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., convened former leaders of the Department of Health and Human Services on Friday to warn about the impact of the Trump administration’s newly announced cuts to the agency’s staff.

A day earlier, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he would lay off about 10,000 employees, in addition to the roughly 10,000 HHS workers who have left voluntarily. Together, that would reduce the department’s workforce by about a quarter.

Murray, a member and former chair of the Senate’s health panel, said in a virtual news conference that the Trump administration “may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease, because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy.”

“This is the kind of carelessness that gets people killed,” Murray said, insisting that her warning was “not hyperbole” before describing how the cuts could make it harder for the government to track disease outbreaks, conduct potentially lifesaving research and help Americans access health insurance.

In a video message announcing his plans, Kennedy cited data showing that the United States ranks last among wealthy nations in health outcomes despite spending more on health care than nearly any other country.

“As secretary, I now understand why all of this money is not improving our health,” he said, describing the department he leads as a “sprawling bureaucracy” held back by “tremendous waste and duplication.”

The department includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and numerous other agencies and offices.

Robert Califf, who led the FDA under both the Obama and Biden administrations, said the planned cuts contradict Trump administration rhetoric about better nutrition and food safety.

“I think all of us will probably agree there are things about the federal government that could be better,” Califf said. “But to make the cuts based on words in someone’s job description or grants that have particular words in them without a thorough consideration of the issues is likely to jeopardize human lives.”

Monica Bertagnolli, who led the National Institutes of Health during the Biden administration, said that even if the funding cuts and delays end up being temporary, they “are already producing irreparable harm.”

“Ironically, this approach undermines the success of the laudable initiatives championed by the current administration,” Bertagnolli said. “Valuable administrative staff that are essential to ensure that our public dollars are spent wisely and that their use is tracked carefully to avoid fraud or any other kind of risk are being laid off at NIH.”

Kennedy’s plan includes closing half of the department’s 10 regional offices, one of which is in Seattle.

Murray said Congress hadn’t been notified which of those offices are slated for closure, but she said that even if the Northwest office stays open, the closures and staff cuts would cause delays and otherwise hamper services across the region.

Republicans in Congress have kept relatively quiet about the planned changes.

As with the Trump administration’s other efforts to downsize the federal workforce, the cuts at HHS are likely to be challenged in court.