At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sec. RFK Jr. spoke to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) about food dyes.
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00:00Mr. Secretary, thank you for being with us. And I don't know if you want to follow up on any of that, but I'd be happy to. Okay, feel free. As I was saying, I'm very conscious of the importance of LIHEAP to, to poor people all across this country.
00:16My brother ran a low-cost, non-profit fuel company for most of his life that provides low-cost fuel to people in New England. I've had many, many people come up to me and said, my life was saved because of that.
00:30I talked to Bo Nigren, who's the president of the Navajo Nation, when I visited about three months ago, and he said, cuts to LIHEAP will end up in killing people. So I understand the importance of this.
00:46I think OMB's rationale was that President Trump's energy policy is going to reduce dramatically the cost of energy in this country. And if that happens, then LIHEAP is just another subsidy to the oil industry.
01:01If it doesn't happen, then Congress is welcome, and they should appropriate the money for LIHEAP, and I will spend it.
01:08I already allocated $400 million from LIHEAP during the last 100 days, and I will continue to do that and get that funding to the people who need it in this country if the fuel costs do not go down.
01:24Great. Thank you for that reassurance.
01:28Mr. Chairman, I want to submit an article for the record here a minute, and I'll refer to it.
01:34But last month, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology concluded in its report to Congress that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to dominate the global biotechnology industry so that other countries, including the United States, are dependent on the channels it controls.
01:55China has already deeply embedded in the United States' critical biotechnology supply chains, including those for life-saving medicines.
02:03And as you know, Secretary, China has a history of weaponizing supply chain dependencies for critical goods and medicines against countries.
02:12For example, in March 2020, following the arrival of COVID-19 from China onto the American homeland, the CCP's mouthpiece, Xinhua News, published a commentary proposing to throw the United States into a sea of coronavirus.
02:27And that's what I'd like to submit for the record, Mr. Chairman.
02:32I request unanimous consent.
02:36Would you agree, Mr. Secretary, that overt reliance on the CCP and the U.S. biotech and health ecosystem poses a threat,
02:43and that we should be developing independent supply chains to protect the health and well-being of Americans
02:50so that we reduce our reliance on China for critical medicines and their active pharmaceutical ingredients?
02:57Yeah, absolutely, and this is a priority for me and for this administration.
03:02China does not spend its biomedical research money on DEI or on other issues.
03:12They're directly and narrowly focused on creating dominance across the globe.
03:17We saw the problem with supply chain controlled by the Chinese during COVID.
03:24And also, the Chinese have a specific program called the Thousand Talents Program.
03:30It is designed to steal U.S. IP and technology, and we have facilitated that at NIH.
03:38I'm funding Chinese scientists with contracts that don't require them even to report their science back to our country,
03:45but they give it directly to Chinese military scientists on bioweapons research,
03:50and we gave them the technology for it.
03:53This is how out of control NIH was under my predecessors.
03:58We are working very, very hard and successfully to bring production home.
04:03We are, you know, I've met repeatedly with Eli Lilly, which is now building nine facilities, nine factories in this country,
04:14including for essential medicines, the ingredients, essential ingredients for those medicines.
04:20We are regularly meeting with all the other pharmaceutical CEOs, and we've told them this is our priority.
04:24We want to produce all the parts of all the essential medicines here in the United States,
04:30and we have already launched a program to do that, and it's already very, very successful.
04:35Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
04:36And then on the issue of medical countermeasures, I wondered if you could talk about challenges facing BARDA,
04:44the Strategic National Stockpile, and how Congress can help you overcome any challenges in that arena.
04:50We have, I mean, you know, BARDA, we are redirecting BARDA so that it's going to do gold standard research.
05:00BARDA has been very successful in the past.
05:02It produced over, I think, 103 FDA licensed drugs or protocols or medical devices for national emergencies.
05:12We run the national stockpile, which has $17 billion worth of supplies.
05:18Some of those supplies are misaligned, and we need to do a better job, and we're going to do that at NIH
05:24to make sure we are prepared for all emergencies, including radiological, chemical, and biological emergencies.
05:34And I would love to work with you, Congressman, on helping us to achieve those goals.
05:41Wonderful.
05:42And then finally, a couple of things.
05:45One is I want to compliment you on your commitment to public service and the way you've responded with grace
05:52towards people who have opposed some of your political views, including some of your family members,
05:57and I've kind of followed that.
05:59I want to really highlight the fact that your Make America Healthy Again has really put this in the spotlight,
06:08in these chronic diseases, and especially starting with children, and nutrition, healthy lifestyles.
06:18I know our community health centers in my district, which is a rural district, want to work with you on those goals.
06:25What can we do to promote this with young children, healthy lunches,
06:31all sorts of areas where local communities can partner with you in this effort?
06:37We are about to reissue the dietary guidelines, and we're going to do it very quickly.
06:42We have until January, but we're going to do it.
06:45I think we'll have it done even before August.
06:48And we took the Biden guidelines, which were 453 pages long,
06:52and were clearly written by industry that are incomprehensible,
06:56driven by the same industry capture and those kind of carnal impulses
07:03that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid.
07:07And we are changing that.
07:09So we're going to have four-page dietary guidelines that tell people essentially eat whole food,
07:14eat the food that's good for you.
07:17That's going to drive changes in the school lunch programs,
07:19and we're going to need your help to make sure we can get good school lunches to Head Start.
07:24I've been touring these Head Start facilities.
07:28Everything they eat is in a package, and it is just loaded with sugar and with chemicals.
07:34We're poisoning this generation.
07:35800,000 kids are the poorest kids in our country,
07:38and we're starting them out with this count against them, with, you know, diabetes, pre-diabetes.
07:4538% of our youth now are diabetic or pre-diabetic.
07:48That was zero when I was a kid.
07:50If anybody thinks that we did gold standard medicine in this country from these institutions,
07:58look at our children.
07:59They're the sickest children in the world.
08:02Lori, you say that you've got, excuse me, Congressman DeLauro,
08:07you say that you've worked for 20 years on getting food tie out.
08:11Give me credit.
08:12I got it out in 100 days.
08:14I'll give you that credit.
08:15All right, so let's work together and do something that we all believe in,
08:20which is have healthy kids in our country, for God's sake.
08:23We can all do that together.
08:25It's not, there's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children.
08:30There's just kids, and we should all be cared, be concerned with them.
08:34Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
08:35Ms. Dane.