Senate HELP Committee Advances NIH and FDA Nominees, CDC Nominee Withdrawn

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On March 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to advance the nominations of Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya to be Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Martin Makary to be Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While Bhattacharya was advanced based on a party-line vote (12-11), Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) joined the 12 Republican members to support Makary’s nomination. In their opening statements, Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said that he believed the nominees could help restore the American people’s trust in public health, while Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) argued against their nominations, citing his belief that the nominees are not the right leaders to address high prescription drug costs. The nominations will now move to the Senate floor for a final vote.

That same day, the committee was set to consider the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon—a former Florida congressman—to be the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In his , Weldon said that the White House informed him the night before that his nomination was being withdrawn because he did not have enough votes to get out of committee. Weldon speculated that Sens. Cassidy and Susan Collins (R-ME) broke with other Republicans because he has been labeled as being “antivax” over his work on “childhood vaccine safety issues” as a member of Congress. He went on to claim that “big Pharma was behind this” and that the industry feared him more than they feared Secretary Kennedy “because of [his] credibility and [his] knowledge of science and medicine.”

Sen. Cassidy and six other HELP Committee Republicans a working group prior to the news about Weldon to examine potential legislative reforms to the CDC. The agency has been widely criticized by Republicans for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in how it communicated public health guidance and its role in implementing controversial risk mitigation strategies (e.g., lockdowns, masking).

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