Tomorrow the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, affectionately known as HELP, will hold a hearing entitled “Restoring Trust Through Radical Transparency: Reviewing Recent Events at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Implications for Children’s Health.” Usually committees use the titles of their hearings to clearly communicate the point they are making and/or to gain the interest of the press and public. The somewhat obscure wording of the title for tomorrow’s hearing suggests the committee may be looking for a little less attention, or at least less attention from a certain individual residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The committee’s website shows two witnesses for the hearing. The first is Susan Monarez, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control, who was fired by Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. mere weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate to serve in that position. That timing alone makes the firing an extraordinary action, as well as an affront to the Senate’s advice and consent role.
The second witness is Debra Houry, who also served in a senior role at CDC and who resigned in protest over Monarez’s firing and RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine agenda, which she believed had “politicized” the CDC. Monarez, according to reports from Politico and others, will testify that she was fired because “I had refused to commit to approving vaccine recommendations without evidence, fire career officials without cause, or resign– and I had shared my concerns with this Committee.”
The fact that the committee is actually hearing from critics of administration policy makes this an extremely rare instance of a congressional committee conducting oversight of the Trump administration. The chair of the HELP committee, Bill Cassidy, is a physician who strongly disagrees with RFK Jr.’s approach to vaccines. One can infer from the hearing title that Cassidy believes the “implications for children’s health” from “recent events” at CDC are not good. But what is this “radical transparency” all about?
The Washington Post explains:
People who have spoken with Cassidy and his staff say that the senator is not seeking a direct confrontation with the Trump administration, wary of being politically punished, but instead is focused on “fact-finding” about Monarez’s abrupt ouster, coronavirus vaccines and other potentially explosive issues. Cassidy also is taking pains to placate Trump and his deputies: The title of Wednesday’s hearing with Monarez — “radical transparency” — is taken from Trump and Kennedy’s own vows to institute radical transparency in government, and he has repeatedly called for Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his Operation Warp Speed work.
I guess that is why Cassidy decided against going with a more straightforward title, like “Batshit Crazy HHS Secretary is Going to Kill Us All.”
Anyway, despite the political risks, Cassidy has apparently decided to bring some transparency to the administration of HHS, which is pretty radical in the current Congress. Good for him.