Sen. Bill Cassidy on Sunday accused Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of failing to honor assurances made during his confirmation process that the childhood vaccination schedule would not be altered, pointing to President Donald Trump’s new executive order reducing the number of recommended vaccines.
Appearing on ABC News’s “This Week,” the Louisiana Republican discussed commitments he said Kennedy and the White House made to secure his support for Kennedy’s confirmation as HHS secretary last year. Cassidy, a physician, indicated that maintaining the existing childhood vaccination schedule was one of those commitments.
“As I’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, there are guarantees that were given to me and guarantees that were supposedly going to be enforced by the White House,” Cassidy told host Martha Raddatz, adding that keeping the childhood vaccine schedule was “among those” pledges.
Cassidy suggested that Kennedy could argue that the latest changes were ordered by Trump rather than by the HHS secretary himself, but said that distinction did not change his broader concern.
“So, people can draw their own conclusions, but it’s pretty evident that … was the White House and the RFK pledge,” added the Louisiana Republican, who is also a physician. “RFK may say, technically, this is the president, not him, and technically, he’s right. But the point is, the American people have been poorly served.”
Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children to 11.
The new guidance also calls for separating the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three individual shots. Under the previous recommendations, children received two doses of the combined MMR vaccine, with the first administered between 12 and 15 months and the second between ages 4 and 6.
Trump’s action came months after a federal judge blocked an earlier attempt to scale back the childhood immunization schedule. Those changes had been advanced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known as ACIP.
Kennedy had moved aggressively to reshape the influential vaccine advisory panel after taking control of HHS, replacing all 17 of its sitting members with a new group of appointees.
The reconstituted committee subsequently voted to change several longstanding childhood vaccination recommendations. Among the changes was a decision to delay the recommended age for children to receive the MMR vaccine together with the chickenpox vaccine.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee, later invalidated the votes taken by ACIP after Kennedy replaced the committee’s membership, effectively blocking those recommendations from taking effect.
Despite the sweeping changes Kennedy has pursued at HHS and Trump’s latest executive order, Cassidy said Sunday that he does not regret casting the pivotal vote that helped confirm Kennedy as health secretary.
Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said that when Kennedy’s nomination was being considered, he also heard from Americans who strongly supported Kennedy, including because of his promise to target ultra-processed foods.
“The point is that when you’re making the decision process, you’re taking in everything at once, and you just make the best decision that presents at … the time,” Cassidy told Raddatz.
{Matzav.com}
