Robert Redfield, the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has requested a pay cut after his $375,000 salary raised questions from Democrats.
The request, first reported by the Washington Post, came after Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote to the Trump administration last week about the salary.
“At $375,000, Dr. Redfield’s salary is significantly larger than that of his CDC director predecessors, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald and Dr. Tom Frieden,” Murray wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “It is also significantly larger than the salaries of other agency leaders within the department, including the HHS secretary, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb.”
Murray the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has been a critic of Redfield’s appointment to the CDC. Redfield is a former AIDS researcher, and Murray has questioned his qualifications for leading the agency.
The CDC did not return a request for comment.
