ICYMI: In Seattle, Senator Murray Highlights Consequences of Trump & Elon’s Cuts & Layoffs at NIH—Hears from Leading Researchers, Patients, and Early Career Scientists
ICYMI: “Devastating Loss”: Senator Murray Slams Trump Gutting Women’s Health Initiative—WHI is the Largest and Most Influential National Study of Women’s Health & Based out of Fred Hutch in Seattle
Senator Murray: “In my time in Congress I have never seen an administration less transparent than this one. I have also never seen an administration so insistent on pretending they are transparent while going out of their way to hide basic information that we require.”
*** VIDEO of Senator Murray’s Q&A HERE***
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, questioned James “Jim” O’Neill, Trump’s nominee to serve as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), at a HELP committee hearing on his nomination. Senator Murray pressed O’Neill on the administration’s refusal to be transparent with Congress and the American people and the importance of the separate and distinct offices at HHS dealing with women’s health.
Senator Murray first responded to Chairman Cassidy’s back-and-forth with Mr. O’Neill immediately prior regarding the importance of HHS’ role in ensuring that people coming to the country from outside the United States are up-to-date on their immunizations: “Mr. Chairman, I just want you to know, the Trump administration fired many of the CDC Port Health station staff. In fact, at Sea-Tac in my state, there used to be four. They are the persons that screen travelers at the ports of entry. So if we don’t have people there to screen, even a mandate would make it very difficult to assure that. So, I share your concern but I also think that you have to have personnel there to do that.”
Senator Murray proceeded to her own questioning: “Mr. O’Neill, we know right now that at HHS they are undertaking a massive reorganization, firing staff, cancelling and terminating thousands of grants and contracts worth billions of dollars, delaying sending that grant funding out—including, by the way, for lifesaving biomedical research. And meanwhile, HHS is currently… refusing to provide basic answers to many of our straightforward questions. They are canceling longstanding briefings, and they are telling Congress and the American public nothing about these dramatic, unprecedented changes. Last week, HHS submitted an operating plan for Fiscal Year 25, required by law. It leaves it blank—the funding levels for 530 programs were left blank!”
“The Department is effectively telling us it doesn’t have to tell us or the American public anything about how it is going to spend tens of billions of dollars, taxpayer dollars, across hundreds of programs. That is really stunning to me. In my time in Congress I have never seen an administration less transparent than this one. I have also never seen an administration so insistent on pretending they are transparent while going out of their way to hide basic information that we require,” Senator Murray continued.
“Mr. O’Neill, I want to ask you: if you are confirmed, will you commit to prioritizing real transparency and sharing information with Congress and the American public about what HHS is doing?”
O’Neill replied, “Yes, I have a, kind of, visceral sense that it’s Congress that authorizes all the programs at HHS, it’s Congress that appropriates the money for HHS, Congress absolutely deserves to have prompt and accurate information, both proactively about future plans, and also in reply to questions, whether it’s testimony or written questions. And yes, I commit, if confirmed, to ensure that the whole Department takes seriously its obligation to provide good, transparent, accurate, prompt information to Congress.”
“Well, I appreciate that answer—I’m not holding my breath because I haven’t seen it happen yet,” Senator Murray replied. “But, Mr. Chairman, I want you to know I am focused on real transparency here. This department is not above congressional oversight, and we have a responsibility and a need to hold all the agencies accountable, so this is something I’m tracking very closely.
Murray continued by pressing O’Neill on HHS’ responsibility for women’s health: “The plan to gut HHS is a disaster for health and safety. But it is based, it seems to me, on a total lack of understanding about how different agencies across the Department work. For example, [Secretary] Kennedy seems to think we shouldn’t have more than one office that covers women’s health. Well, women’s health requires dedicated focus in different areas—for example, workforce training at HRSA, cancer prevention at CDC, scientific research at NIH. These are separate and distinct efforts addressing women’s health, which has long been underfunded. But because of Congress’ dedicated, bipartisan investments, we have been able to make progress.”
“So if you are confirmed, would you commit to restoring women’s health functions across HHS and directing the Department to spend appropriated funds for women’s health, as directed by Congress?,” Murray asked.
“Obviously women’s health will continue to be a critical issue, it is distinct from men’s health in many significant ways,” O’Neill replied. “The principles that the Secretary outlined for the proposed reorg said that any reorg would be, uh, based on preserving all essential functions of the department, ensuring that they continue and that they are executed on well—as mandated by statute—and also the principle that two functions make more sense to be conducted within the same agency or office, that that could make sense. It also makes sense to me that if functions are closely similar, perhaps we should consider putting them in the same office.”
“Women’s health isn’t just one little corner,” Murray responded. “Women are affected [in] many different ways, including, as I said, through workforce training, through cancer prevention, through scientific research, different agencies. Those offices all do very different things, there is a reason why Congress passed funding for each one of them. Ignoring that means ignoring the law.”
In late March, President Trump and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFK Jr. announced plans to cut HHS’s workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 (a 25 percent reduction) through a combination of mass firings and buy-outs and hollow out the Department, which is responsible for protecting Americans’ health and delivering essential health and social services. The announcement followed weeks of mass firings and chaos at HHS that prevented the Department from executing its mission to protect people’s health, and an onslaught of detrimental policies that are halting lifesaving biomedical research and more. Senator Murray has been a leading voice in Congress raising the alarm over HHS’ unilateral reorganization plan and slamming the closure of the HHS Region 10 office in Seattle and the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Spokane Research Laboratory. Senator Murray has sent oversight letters and hosted numerous press conferences and events to lay out how the administration’s reckless gutting of HHS is risking Americans health and safety and will set our country back decades, and lifting up the voices of HHS employees who were fired for no reason and through no fault of their own.
As a longtime appropriator and former Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, Senator Murray has always championed women’s health care and fought to boost investments in women’s health care research in particular. As the former Chair of the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education & Related Agencies Subcommittee, Senator Murray has fought for increases in women’s health research programs across NIH, including the Implementing a Maternal Health and Pregnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) Initiative and the Office of Research on Women’s Health. As the top Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee, Murray led negotiations and passage of the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016, bipartisan legislation that provided $4.8 billion over the next 10 years to invest in a wide range of health priorities including with regards to women’s health care. Murray leads and has repeatedly introduced the Jeanette Acosta Invest in Women’s Health Act, which would increase women’s access to preventive and lifesaving cancer screenings. Murray has also been a strong advocate for women veterans’ health care—transforming the VA over decades to meet the needs of women veterans, whether by authoring and passing the Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act in 2010, helping to pass the Deborah Sampson Act and MAMMO Act to address gender disparities at VA and expand access to breast cancer screening and treatment at VA, or by delivering annual funding as an appropriator to help VA provide the necessary care for women veterans.
Last year as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray delivered a record $900 million investment in women veterans’ health care. Senator Murray also leads landmark bipartisan legislation endorsed by Halle Berry to boost menopause research and, for the first time, coordinate the federal government’s existing programs related to menopause and mid-life women’s health. Last month, Senator Murray introduced separate bipartisan legislation to require VA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to research and study the effects of menopause on women servicemembers and women veterans.
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