After dismissing about 10,000 employees as directed by the Department of Government Efficiency, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday that some of them will be reinstated.
“Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated,” Kennedy told reporters, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them.”
Kennedy on March 27 announced a restructuring plan that would save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year through a workforce reduction of about 10,000 full-time employees. The total restructuring plan would result in a downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees, with the department reducing its divisions from 28 to 15 and centralizing core functions in other areas.
As DOGE worked fast to slash federal spending by cutting thousands of jobs at various agencies, many departments reportedly are rehiring those dismissed after their roles proved to be necessary or federal courts intervened.
Layoff notices at HHS began Monday night and continued through Tuesday morning, the Journal reported, with employees scrambling to figure out who had been cut and how to continue government functions delegated to those workers.
Kennedy said Thursday a program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that monitored lead levels in children’s blood would be reinstated. He said agency leaders approached the reorganization with a willingness to make dramatic cuts even if they made errors.
It was “always the plan” to fix mistakes made from the DOGE cuts, Kennedy said, according to the Journal.
“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 reinstalled because we’ll make mistakes,” he said.
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