DOGE Firings and Re-hirings at HHS are Reckless, Cruel and Incompetent
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a significant chunk of DOGE staffing cuts of the Department of Health and Human Services ‘are going to have to be reinstalled.’
Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman issued the following statement:
“Protecting our children from lead poisoning is not the sort of thing you experiment with. And it’s a good example of why the Musk-Kennedy-Trump approach of destroying things first and asking questions later will harm many Americans in ways that cannot ever be fixed.
“It is much easier to destroy a health program than it is to build one. But never will we be able to fix the lives damaged by this level of recklessness. These cuts are destroying health agencies and wiping out institutional knowledge. The idea that mistakes can be quickly fixed with no harm done is, to borrow a phrase, malignantly stupid. This is yet another example that proves Kennedy is totally unqualified for his position as HHS secretary.
“If Kennedy’s claim is true — that it always was the plan to cut programs and then reinstate them — then the plan was either incredibly stupid or casually cruel. And of course, it could be stupid, cruel and a lie all at the same time.”