Senate Health Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said at the end of Thursday’s hearing he is “struggling” with whether to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.
Cassidy, a physician, pleaded multiple times for Kennedy to publicly declare that vaccines don’t cause autism.
“That would have an incredible impact,” Cassidy said.
But Kennedy wouldn’t do it, saying only that if the evidence proved otherwise, he would apologize for past comments suggesting a link.
Cassidy noted that Kennedy has a “megaphone” and chastised him for using it to sow doubt about vaccines.
“A worthy movement called MAHA,” Cassidy told Kennedy at the conclusion of the three-hour hearing. “To improve the health of Americans, or to undermine it, always asking for more evidence, never accepting the evidence that is there? That is why I have been struggling with your nomination.”
Thursday’s hearing, the second in two days, was lower stakes than Wednesday. Unlike the Senate Finance Committee, the Health Committee hearing was only a courtesy; the committee won’t vote on advancing Kennedy’s nomination to the floor.
But Cassidy sits on both committees and is considered a key swing vote. If Kennedy clears the Finance Committee, he can afford to lose only three Republican votes on the Senate floor.
Cassidy also questioned whether Kennedy could harm President Trump’s legacy.
Cassidy noted that as a Republican, he wanted Trump to be successful, but if someone doesn’t get vaccinated because of Kennedy’s “policies or attitudes” and later dies of a vaccine-preventable disease, it could get “blown up in the press.”
“The greatest tragedy will be her death. But I can also tell you an associated tragedy … that will cast a shadow over President Trump’s legacy, which I want to be the absolute best legacy,” Cassidy said.
Kennedy spent the two hearings trying to distance himself from his past statements and positions as a vaccine skeptic. But Cassidy wondered if someone like Kennedy, who has made his career questioning the benefit of vaccines and deliberately doubting top scientists, could change his ways.
“Does a 70-year-old man, 71-year-old man, who spent decades criticizing vaccines, and who’s financially vested in finding fault with vaccines — can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?” Cassidy asked.
