Full Opening Remarks by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the Senate Finance Committee

By The MAHA Report

HHS Secretary Kennedy’s remarks before the Senate Finance Committee, on Thursday, September 4, have sent shockwaves through both the political and scientific establishments. Entrenched interests are predictably panicking, but those interested in the truth deserve to hear from Kennedy directly.

Yesterday, during a White House dinner with major tech executives, President Trump, responding to a question from press about the Kennedy hearing, called him a “very good person” who “means very well.” He continued, “And he's got some little different ideas. I guarantee a lot of the people at this table like RFK Jr., and I do, but he's got a different take, and we want to listen to all of those takes.”

President Trump added, “It's not your standard talk. I would say that, and that has to do with medical and vaccines. But if you look at what's going on in the world with health and look at this country also with regard to health, I like the fact that he's different."

Vice President Vance also offered support for Kennedy, writing the following on X, “When I see all these senators trying to lecture and ‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy today all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma. You're full of shit and everyone knows it.”

As the dust settles from yesterday's dramatic senate hearing, we want to be sure our faithful MAHA Report readers have read or heard Bobby's full, resonant opening statement.

Here it is, below:

Under President Trump's leadership, we at HHS are enacting a once-in-a-generation shift from a sick care system to a true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease. Chronic diseases reach crisis proportions in our country. And finally, we have an administration that is taking action.

The Maha report Assessment, which the White House released in May, was the first government analysis of the key drivers of childhood chronic disease: ultra-processed foods, chemical exposures, physical inactivity, and over-medicalization. This month, we will follow with the Maha report strategy, the Trump administration's solution for addressing each cause. At HHS, we haven't just been writing reports.

We have been the busiest, most proactive administration in HHS history. In just half a year, we've taken on food dyes, baby formula contamination, the grass loophole, fluoride in our drinking water, gas station heroin, electronic cigarettes, drug prices, prior authorization, information blocking, healthcare interoperability.

We are ending gain of function research, child mutilation, and reducing animal testing. We are addressing cell phone use in schools, excessive screen time for youth, the lack of nutrition education in our medical schools, sickle cell anemia, hepatitis C, the East Palestine chemical spill, and many others.

At FDA, we are now on track to approve more drugs this year than at any time in history. I'm also proud to say that HHS under President Trump is doing more with less. We have taken measures to fight waste, fraud, and abuse just by eliminating duplicative enrollments and CMS. We are saving taxpayers $14 billion a year. Meanwhile, we are expanding access for people who need it.

We are ending races, diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, and instead focusing on aiding low-income and vulnerable families regardless of their race, which was the original intent of Title X. We're also pouring a billion dollars into Head Start and the administration for children and families. Compassion need not be the casualty of efficiency.

I'd like to highlight some issues that have not gotten media attention. First, we are doing our part to fill the president's commitment to stop human trafficking, especially of children. We inherited a terrible humanitarian crisis from the previous administration with its open border policies, which allowed the appalling loss of 476,000 unaccompanied children. We have implemented policies now to ensure that that appalling tragedy can never happen again. We have knocked on 82,000 doors and located 22,000 of those children. I promise you that we will do more in the next three years.

We are also addressing the disastrous health conditions in tribal communities on Native American reservations. I've met face to face with tribal leaders in dozens of communities and tribes in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, and elsewhere. And I look forward to making HHS resources more available to those communities.

One of the most significant initiatives under President Trump is the Rural Health Transformation Fund, part of the president's big beautiful bill, which will provide the greatest investment of federal money into rural healthcare in history.

Finally, I would like to address the recent shakeups at CDC. These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world's gold standard public health agency with the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease. CDC failed that responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous and nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools, caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science, and heightened economic inequality. And yet all those oppressive and unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.

America is home to 4.2% of the world's population, yet we had nearly 20% of COVID deaths. We literally did worse than any country in the world. And the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving. That's why we need bold, competent, and creative new leadership at CDC, people able and willing to chart a new course.

As my father once said, progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator, and change has its enemies. That's why we need new blood at CDC. That's also why it's imperative that we remove officials with conflicts of interest and catastrophically bad judgment and political agendas. We need unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evidence-based science in the public interest. Those are the guiding principles behind the changes at the CDC, and that is what you can expect all across our agency for the next three years.