Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette is calling health cuts by the Trump administration illegal, because they circumvent congressional authority. She said they'll have a devastating impact on the health of Coloradans and Americans.
The administration announced Thursday a major restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes cuts to 20,000 full-time jobs.
Among the total are employees who have taken the administration's Fork in the Road offer and early retirement, plus another of 10,000 jobs. It will trim the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000, according to an agency press release.
The change also includes a reorganization and reduction of HHS divisions from 28 to 15, according to NPR.
According to reporting from the Wall St. Journal, the cuts include:
- 3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration — or about 19 percent of the agency’s workforce
- 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — or about 18 percent of its workforce
- 1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health — or about 6 percent of its workforce
- 300 employees from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — or about 4 percent of its workforce
DeGette spoke with CPR health reporter John Daley. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
John Daley: What your first take when you heard about these cuts?
Rep. Diana DeGette: Number one, they're illegal as much of what the Trump administration has done. And the reason is because the NIH and its institutes have been set up with careful bipartisan collaboration by Congress, the House and Senate in conjunction with the scientific community and the White House.
Over the years, I'm sure that there are some additional efficiencies to be had, and everybody agrees we need to do oversight to make sure that we're doing our research as expeditiously and as efficiently as possible. But having one guy that, being Secretary Kennedy, with many views that are not science-based, just be able to go in and say he's firing 10,000 people and combining a number of the institutes is really shocking, and it's going to cost lives.
Daley: What do you think the impact will be in Colorado?
DeGette: The impact in Colorado, we've already been seeing some of this over at Anschutz Medical Center with their research grants. I think that we will lose research money, we'll lose continuity. We will lose jobs of people who are on the cutting edge
Daley: In a press release, you talked about some of the various types of research that will be harmed by these cuts. Can you tell us more about that?
DeGette: The NIH is structured as the gold standard for biomedical research around the world. And it is structured so that we have scientists who are doing the basic research, but then they're working with partners like Anschutz Medical Center to develop cures for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes. And when you take away that funding and when you take away those jobs, it's going to impact your ability to find those cures.
Daley: Can you tell me a little more about why you view this as illegal? When a new administration comes in, they make changes. The people that lead those agencies can decide to prioritize certain things over other things. That's not what you see happening here?
DeGette: The NIH was established by congressional action, and the institutes have been established and supported by congressional action. I've been on the committee that has oversight of the NIH for my entire career in Congress, almost 30 years. And from time to time, we have actually undertaken the job of working with the administration and working with the NIH to restructure it and to try to find ways that can work more efficiently and more productively.
We had a big NIH reauthorization about 15, 20 years ago, and we've been looking at doing another NIH reauthorization now. But this is something that is congressionally chartered, and so it's illegal for the administration to completely ignore Congress Article One of the Constitution and just go in and do this without our participation or knowledge. But in addition, and most importantly, it's going to hurt research. It's going to hurt our ability to find the cures for diseases like cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson's. And right at the moment, we're at the cusp of all of these exciting new breakthroughs. Why would you do that?
Daley: Have you been hearing from constituents that are concerned specifically about what you're talking about? About NIH cuts and also the impact to research and potentially lives?
DeGette: I've been hearing from constituents, I've been hearing from patient advocacy groups that advocate for all of these patients. I've been hearing from researchers themselves. I've been hearing from former officials at the NIH and the FDA under Republican administrations. People are horrified about what this is going to do to our role as the premier research institution in the world.
Daley: And you've tried to meet or get a meeting with Secretary Kennedy?
DeGette: Yes, we sent him a letter asking for a meeting early on. And by the way, normally by this time in Congress, Secretary Kennedy would have come over to the health subcommittee that I'm the ranking Democrat on to talk about his priorities for this year. We haven't seen any evidence he intends to appear.
Daley: And when you requested to meet with him, did you hear back?
DeGette: No, we heard nothing.
Daley: So these cuts are happening, but there's no communication at all about what's being cut when, why, any of that?
DeGette: We heard rumors about cuts at the NIH and I have been contacted by many researchers at the NIH, in Anschutz, in other places, and people have been really worried. We didn't find out about this plan until we opened the newspaper this morning.
Daley: Do you have a sense of why these cuts are being made?
DeGette: Well, I am not on their signal chain, so I don't know why these cuts are being made, but I will tell you, I suspect it's a combination of some of the unscientific views that Kennedy has and the 20-something-year-olds over at DOGE who have just been told to slash and burn without any knowledge of how these organizations are organized or what they're doing.
Daley: Sen. Bennett was interviewed by Ryan Warner, our host with Colorado Matters. And I think the term that he used was “dismantle,” that he sees this as the administration, broadly, beyond the HHS cuts, the wider, huge swath of cuts being made, that this is essentially a dismantling of the federal government that's underway.
DeGette: Well, I think a description that I would use for what they're doing to our public health and research institutions is slash and burn, and I can't figure out why, because for example, the NIH helps us find cures to diseases. They're the ones that helped fund the mapping of the genome, which actually helped us find therapies that have cured many cancers. And the CDC helps us identify if we have pandemics coming up. And so if we had another pandemic coming up, if they slash and burn the CDC, we're not going to be able to predict that we're not going to be able to stop thousands of people, maybe even millions of people from dying. So I can't figure out why they're doing this, because public health and American's ability to find cures for disease should be one of the number one priorities of our federal government. Why would they go after this?
Daley: Democrats don't control the Senate or the House or the executive branch currently. What can you do to try to fight back here?
DeGette: Well, I am going to be spending the next few days reaching out to many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because all of these efforts that I've worked on have been bipartisan efforts with senior Republicans and privately, many Republicans have told me they're worried about our biomedical research system. They need to step up to the plate now, and they need to work with us to make sure this doesn't happen. I'm calling upon the chairman of the committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, to have some hearings on this, and we need to put a stop to it before it really puts many, many lives at risk.
Daley: If the Republicans don't agree to hold those earrings, what else can you do?
DeGette: I'll tell you what, I don't think Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy want to get in the middle of a whole bunch of moms who have kids that have incurable diseases, and those patients and their families are going to be up in arms about this and about the cutting of research that could save their children's lives.
Daley: You're also a member of that litigation task force, right? Do you see Congress getting involved in lawsuits about these cuts?
DeGette: So I do think because it's illegal, I do think there will be lawsuits about these cuts, and the lawsuits will have to be filed by citizens. It could be those moms with kids who have rare diseases could be filing these lawsuits. And then Congress could submit briefs amicus brief to the court, and I would be happy to champion that.
Daley: It seems that if you combine just all of these cuts, I wonder about the impact of this to the broader health system, the Colorado state health department, but also these research universities, it seems like this is kind of cutting things to the bone. Do you see it that way too?
DeGette: Well, the behavioral health cuts and the cuts to biomedical research, the cuts to the Centers for Disease Control to help prevent the spread of disease and also predict the spread of disease, all of those things, all of those cuts are going to deeply harm and American's health. So you say it's cutting it to the bone, but I would argue it's severing the bone because you're taking away the ability to predict disease, to treat disease, and to cure disease.
Daley: This is about Kennedy's part of, you mentioned the 10,000 layoffs, but you also talked about consolidating other offices. Are you concerned at all about the five to 10 regional offices? And given how the administration has targeted sanctuary cities and Colorado in general, are you concerned that they're going to try and close the Denver office, the HHS office?
DeGette: I have no doubt. I mean, I really don't know what they're going to do because I haven't been able to see any rhyme or reason to what they're trying to do.
CPR’s Public Affairs reporter Caitlyn Kim contributed to this report.
