Kennedy suggests 20 percent of HHS cuts may be reversed
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he expects about 20 percent of fired employees to be reinstated as the agency backtracks after making cuts directed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated,” Kennedy told reporters Thursday. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them.”
Late last month Kennedy announced the agency was looking to dismiss 10,000 employees as part of a major restructuring effort. HHS sought to reduce staff from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000 and cut 10,000 through layoffs, while the rest will come through a buyout offer of sorts.
However, as DOGE has moved quickly to slash federal spending by cutting thousands of jobs at various agencies, the departments are hiring many back after their roles proved to be necessary or the courts intervened.
Kennedy noted Thursday that a program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that monitored blood lead levels for children would be reinstated, The Wall Street Journal reported.
It was “always the plan” to fix mistakes made from the DOGE cuts, Kennedy 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 reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes,” he said.
Under those cuts, HHS’s 28 divisions were consolidated to 15. Ten regional offices became five.
In March, Kennedy defended the restructuring and noted it would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year and “serve multiple goals without impacting critical services.”
The cuts hit the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC the hardest.