Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to speak about the extreme cuts that have affected the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control. First of all, the DOGE operation starts out with a premise that it is attacking waste, fraud, and abuse. And I am for that. Anyplace that we can save taxpayers money by responsible assessment of what programs are working or aren't, anytime we can uncover waste or certainly fraud and abuse, I want to do that, and I want that to be done across the board. Whether you are talking about health programs where they could be better organized or they could be more efficiently run to achieve the goal of better services for the people you represent and I represent for all Americans, I want to do that. But how is DOGE going about it? And we are here to talk about how they are doing it in the Department of Health and Human Services, under Mr. Kennedy. Basically, they are doing it by sending out firing notices to people. Over 5,000 people have been fired, and that includes 700 in the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 in the National Institutes of Health, and 600 in the Centers for Disease Control. Here is the question, and the answer is obvious: If you want to make a program more efficient, do you fire the people first and essentially erode any capacity of that program to deliver the services that the American people need? Or do you study the organization?…”