New Hartford, Iowa — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says Robert F. Kennedy Junior could help to answer many questions that haven’t been raised before, if he’s confirmed as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy is a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, and Grassley says he’s encouraged by the choice of Kennedy to head HHS.
Kennedy abandoned his bid for the White House after striking a deal to give Donald Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration. Grassley says he sees an advantage to having a businessman who is not a politician raising questions about government programs.
During the campaign, Kennedy said Trump had asked him to reorganize several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. Trump also proposes creating a Department of Government Efficiency to be co-chaired by billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. It would look into ways to slash government regulations and spending while downsizing the federal workforce. Grassley says he’d welcome such a review.
Musk pledged to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget, but he’s not offered many specifics on how he’d go about it.
