00:07Mr. Secretary, how many employees were there at HHS when you took over?
00:1482,000.
00:16How many do you have today?
00:1862,000.
00:20Okay.
00:22That's about the level it was in 2019, right before COVID.
00:25Is this the first time that an institution in America has ever downsized?
00:34I don't think so.
00:36I think private and public institutions have history.
00:39Microsoft just announced that they were going to reduce their workforce by 6,000 people.
00:47You think that will be the end of Microsoft?
00:50Senator, we wouldn't have reduced anybody.
00:53You think that will be the end of Microsoft?
00:54I don't think so, Senator.
01:01Meta, I still call them Facebook, just announced they're going to reduce their workforce by 3,000 people.
01:08You think that will be the end of Meta?
01:10I imagine it will not.
01:12Yeah.
01:13Think maybe the people at Meta know what they're doing?
01:16I think that they do.
01:18They make a lot of money, Senator.
01:20Do you hate NIH?
01:24I love NIH.
01:25I grew up with NIH.
01:27I visited when I was a boy.
01:28I loved science.
01:30And those were my favorite afternoons, visiting the labs at NIH.
01:34Do you hate medical research?
01:35No.
01:36I think medical – we need to lead the world in medical research in this country.
01:40In fact, isn't it true, Mr. Secretary, that you would like to see more money spent on medical research?
01:49Obviously.
01:50I'm the secretary of this department.
01:52No secretary wants to see his budget cut.
01:54Well, one way of doing that, it seems to me, would be to stop some of the stealing.
02:02And let me tell you what I mean by that.
02:05Let's suppose you give – NIH gives a university $100 million to research, for medical research, to research a cure.
02:15And that university takes $30 million of it, doesn't spend it on the research, they use it to subsidize the rest of their university.
02:29Is that – does that show a commitment to medical research?
02:35No.
02:35And I mentioned before the example of Stanford, which was taking 78 percent in indirect costs and not – we don't know what they were spending on.
02:44It's left, isn't it?
02:46It's not a good way to spend federal taxpayer dollars.
02:52We call that stealing.
02:54Is there any doubt in your mind that a lot of universities are taking this NIH money, which is supposed to be spent on medical research, and using it to fund other parts of their university?
03:09Is there any doubt in your mind, Bobby?
03:10Oh, and, Senator, the other people who are writing grants, like the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, they paid 10 percent to 15 percent in indirect costs.
03:23We were paying 50, 60, 70 percent.
03:26So, in fact, what you're doing is adding money to medical research.
03:31We will be able to fund many, many, many more studies by eliminating that $9 billion, at least part of that $9 billion cost.
03:41Okay.
03:43I want to ask you about LIHEAP.
03:46Are you familiar with this GAO report they did on LIHEAP?
03:51LIHEAP?
03:53I am not, Senator.
03:55They found – they audited seven states.
03:58They found 11,000 dead people getting LIHEAP grants.
04:07You familiar with that?
04:08No, but that is pretty typical of many of the other programs that we're working with.
04:14Some of the – they found prisoners getting grants, didn't they?
04:20Were they using the grants to heat their jail cell?
04:23Well, they found 1,000 federal employees getting the grants with federal salaries that greatly exceeded the income limits.
04:40They found some of those folks living in million-dollar homes.
04:49I got 18 seconds.
04:51Why do we allow highly processed foods in America?
05:03That's a complicated question, but it's driven by profits to a food industry that is making money by poisoning American kids,
05:13and they don't do it abroad.
05:15They make the same products for Canada and for Europe that do not contain many of those chemicals.
05:21You understand, Mr. Secretary.
05:23There's nothing you can do that's going to make many of my Democratic colleagues happy.
05:28You get that, don't you?
05:29I do understand.
05:30I'm coming to understand that, Senator.
05:35Senator Murray, welcome.
05:36Nice to see you, and I'll turn it over to you for questions.
05:39Thank you very much, Chair Capito, Senator Baldwin.
05:42I look forward to working with you both again.
