The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., admitted to making “mistakes” when laying off as many as 10,000 public health workers among the DOGE federal workforce cuts.
The cuts came from DOGE
The dramatic cuts and restructuring of the federal workforce came with US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE which he created with the goal of reducing government spending.
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Some health jobs were removed among the DOGE cuts
With the executive order to reduce government spending, as many as 10,000 doctors, scientists, inspectors and others were laid off from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on March 27.
According to the HHS, the order’s “workforce optimization initiative” also included streamlining of the department’s functions and the consolidation of its units into 15 new divisions.
RFK Jr. explained the changes at the time
At the time, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. said, “We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
“This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer,” he added.
But some workers were mistakenly cut
While the plan was to optimize the HHS’ work with a lower cost, RFK Jr. has now said that some programs and jobs that were cut weren’t supposed to be cut, and would be reinstated, according to ABC News.
He said it was “always the plan”
RFK Jr. said the reinstatement was the plan all along, telling the outlet, “We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people.”
“In the course of that, there were a number of instances where studies that should have not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them. Personnel that should not have been cut were cut—we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan,” he added.
Around 20% of the laid off workforce were cut by mistake
According to the BBC, around 20% of the federal workforce that was cut off in the wake of the DOGE initiatives were laid off by mistake.
This included an entire team working on poisoning and prevention at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
DOGE was tasked to cut the federal workforce
DOGE, which is led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was tasked by Trump to reduce the size of the federal workforce and therefore reduce government debt from around $36.22 trillion.
RFK Jr. said, “Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstated because we’ll make mistakes.”
Erik Svendsen also commented on the layoffs
Erik Svendsen, who was running the CDC Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice until last week, told Politico, “It’s been very difficult for people to understand and emotionally process.”
“With all of us gone, there’s no one who can do this work,” he added. While RFK Jr. has said some HSS staff will be reinstated, it’s still unclear which ones those will be or what functions the health department will bring back.
