Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has come clean about mistakes made within the department following the dismissal of thousands of employees.
After hastily axing 10,000 government employees under the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Kennedy now admits that essential public health programs were mistakenly eliminated and must be reinstated.
Specifically, Kennedy revealed that around 20% of the personnel cuts made under the DOGE efficiency initiative would need to be reversed.
He stressed the need to correct cuts that should never have occurred. He admitted the DOGE task force erred when it implemented a plan with an impractical 80% cut rate.
DOGE’s approach to “draining the swamp” has inadvertently endangered critical programs that protect American families.
These include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, which monitors dangerous toxins that affect children.
The Lead Poisoning Prevention program’s elimination left requests from Milwaukee’s health department regarding lead in water unanswered.
Program director Erik Svendsen had reported that work had completely stopped.
The Food and Drug Administration’s inspections office, which ensures food and medicine are safe from contamination, also suffered significant staffing losses.
Around 170 employees were terminated, forcing the agency to cut routine inspections of facilities that produce the medications.
Kennedy admitted:
“Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we’ll make mistakes.”
Despite these missteps, Kennedy maintains that the overall goal remains intact: “We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people.”
“If our program is reinstated, that is fantastic news. We need this for our nation. We need this for our children across the country,” Svendsen said while reacting to the news.
The administration has yet to clarify exactly which programs will be reinstated beyond the lead poisoning surveillance work.
Meanwhile, CDC officials report they have received no official notification about reinstatements.
