The Senate Finance Committee voted Tuesday to advance the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after a pair of contentious hearings last week.
All 14 Republicans on the panel — including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Majority Whip John Barasso (R-Wyo.) — voted to support President Trump’s pick of Kennedy, with all 13 Democrats opposed.
Kennedy, 71, is expected to be considered by the full Senate sometime next week, and would clinch confirmation so long as no more than four Republicans vote against him.
RFK Jr. was also vetted last week by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee — with one aide calling that hearing a “courtesy” proceeding that would not lead to a vote.
An early whip count showed that President Trump’s pick to helm HHS had nabbed the support of all 14 Finance Committee Republicans, sources previously told The Post, after facing sharp questions from Democrats about his past claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
HELP Chairman Bill Cassidy, who also sits on the Finance Committee, had particularly taken issue with RFK Jr.’s position that studies have linked vaccines with rising rates of autism.
Midway through the Finance hearing Tuesday, Cassidy (R-La.) revealed that he was going to back the nominee — despite leaving last week’s hearings undecided.
“I’ve had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even this morning. I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel,” Cassidy posted on X.
“With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes.”
A longtime environmental lawyer, Kennedy slipped up a few times in his hearings when trying to explain the differences between key benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid but mostly stuck to his message that Trump, 78, had nominated him to “Make America Healthy Again” by ending the chronic disease epidemic and cleaning up the US food supply.
RFK Jr. also had to defend an onslaught of outlandish claims he made in the past about the virus causing COVID-19 being “ethnically targeted” against black and Caucasian people, about Lyme disease being a militarily-engineered bioweapon and about not being willing to “take sides on 9/11” — more than two decades after the national tragedy.
“Mr. Kennedy, if confirmed, will have the opportunity to deliver much needed change to our nation’s health care system,” Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said.
“He has spent his career fighting to end America’s chronic illness epidemic and has been a leading advocate for health care transparency, both for patients and for taxpayers.”
Crapo also noted that the HHS secretary-designate had answered more than 900 questions on the record from his panel alone, before urging his fellow Republicans to vote for confirmation.
