Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Thursday that up to 20% of recent workforce cuts to his department were mistakes and that affected employees would “have to be reinstated.”
His comments come after the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday plans to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in human resources, procurement, finance, and information technology, bringing the total number of cuts to the department to about a quarter of its staff.
Two days later, Kennedy told reporters in Virginia that many of those workers should not have been cut. He has been working with the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce HHS redundancies, particularly in the administrative sphere, but research and “studies” personnel and programs had been mistakenly looped in as part of the bureaucracy-slashing initiative, the HHS secretary said.
“We’re streamlining the agencies. We’re going to make it work for public health, make it work for the American people,” Kennedy said. “In the course of that, there were a number of instances where studies that should not have been cut were cut, and we’ve reinstated them.”
“Personnel that should not have been cut were cut,” he continued. “We’re reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated because we’ll make mistakes,” Kennedy said, speaking to reporters at a stop in Virginia.
The elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch, which monitors lead levels among children, was among the mistakes made, he said.
“And one of the things that President Trump has said is that if we make mistakes, we’re going to admit it and we’re going to remedy it, and that’s one of the mistakes,” the HHS secretary said of the CDC firings.
Overall, Kennedy has expressed praise for DOGE’s help in reducing the federal workforce at HHS, crediting the initiative during a March 24 Cabinet meeting for identifying “extraordinary waste in my department.”
“The expenditures, the budget of HHS during the Biden administration went up by 38%, the employees went up by 17%, and health care went down,” he said. “We have 40 comms departments. We have 40 procurement departments. We have 40 IT departments … none of them talking to each other.”
With the assistance of DOGE head Elon Musk, Kennedy said, HHS is “eliminating the redundancies” and “streamlining our department.”
Secretary Kennedy: “We’ve identified extraordinary waste at HHS.”
“The budget of HHS during the Biden administration went up by 38%, the employees went up by 17%, yet health care went down.”
“We have 40 comms departments, 40 procurement departments, 40 IT departments, and 40 HR… pic.twitter.com/5aqmoEmjtD
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(@AVPac_US) March 24, 2025
Kennedy addressed Tuesday’s sweeping workforce cuts at HHS in a statement to X, calling the move a “difficult moment.” However, he defended the mass layoffs as a “win-win for taxpayers,” saying the layoffs would not affect essential services such as Medicare and that they were needed to “realig[n] HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
“Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Despite spending $1.9 trillion in annual costs, Americans are getting sicker every year. In the past four years alone, the agency’s budget has grown by 38% — yet outcomes continue to decline,” he said. “We must shift course. HHS needs to be recalibrated to emphasize prevention, not just sick care. These changes will not affect Medicare, Medicaid, or other essential health services.”
On Thursday, Kennedy again defended the majority of the sweeping workforce cuts at HHS.
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“The cuts in all of our agency are not affecting science,” he said. “Front-line enforcement jobs and health delivery jobs are preserved.”
Last week, Kennedy announced a major restructuring at HHS, estimated to save $1.8 billion annually, including consolidating 28 “alphabet soup” subagencies into 15 new divisions.
