At today's Senate Republican press briefing, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) was asked about HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is removing all appointees from the Vaccine Advisory Committee.
00:01Do you have any concerns about Secretary Kennedy removing all the appointees from the Vaccine Advisory Board?
00:07And do you still have confidence in the Secretary?
00:08Well, I think most of us up here want to have confidence in the vaccine process that is used in this country.
00:17And so as he makes decisions about who he's going to put on that, who he's going to replace people with on that panel,
00:23I suspect my colleagues and I will be paying a lot of attention to that.
00:26Do you have a plan B for the debt limit if you don't pass reconciliation by New York State?
00:31There is no plan B.
00:33It's plan A.
00:33We have to get it done.
00:35Failure is not an option.
00:36One more.
00:37Are there any provisions in the House reconciliation, though, who don't think to survive a birdbath?
00:41Well, I think there are always provisions.
00:44And when the House sends it over, they don't have the restrictions that we have to comply with here.
00:49And so my expectation is there perhaps will be some things that won't survive the bird test, the birdbath here in the Senate.
00:56But we obviously are going to fight very, very hard on all those issues and make our arguments in front of the parliamentarian, and that process is underway.
01:04We've already been doing it.
01:06Well, there are some examples, which I won't get into specifics, but as you know, the bird test, of course, requires that it be principally about revenue and spending and not policy.
01:15But those are arguments.
01:17What we saw the Democrats do when they had House, Senate, White House, unified control of the government is they dramatically expanded the scope of what's eligible for consideration under reconciliation.
01:28And so we're using that template, and we're going to push as hard as we can for the priorities that the House included in hopes that we can have a bill at the end that preserves as much of the work that the House did as possible.
