I love Zen Koans. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a noise? What is the sound of one hand clapping? If no one counts the bodies, did anyone really die?

Ok, I made up that last one. But lately, the sentiment seems to guide many of the nation’s top policymakers as they lay waste to federal agencies. The logic is straightforward: if federal agencies no longer track how many people have died from things like preventable foodborne illnesses or drinking too much alcohol, who’s to say the Administration’s policies have not been an unqualified success?

But what gets measured matters. That’s why debates over which measurements should guide society have raged for decades. Famously, in 1968, the late Robert F. Kennedy lamented that “the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.”  He pointed out the absurdity of treating “air pollution and cigarette advertising,” “ambulances to clear our highways of carnage,” “special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them,” and “the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl,” as mere engines of economic activity.

During the first Trump Administration, as COVID deaths and reported infections briefly commanded more of our collective attention than economic growth and stock market indices, RFK’s critique came to seem more prescient than ever. The economy matters, of course, but only insofar as it helps us attain “that which makes life worthwhile.” RFK understood that measuring things like poverty, literacy, infant mortality, and hunger were essential to inform public policy, just as he understood the need to fight organized crime, and to protect civil rights.

Not so much Kennedy’s third son, current HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This past Friday, RFK, Jr. presided over the termination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team responsible for planning the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey or NHANES—“a bellwether of the country’s health.” The news adds insult to injury for Americans still grappling with the Administration’s decision last month to cancel a survey estimating the number of Americans who do not have enough to eat, or its decision in the summer to stop tracking six of eight foodborne pathogens.

A brief aside: For those struggling with some RFK-related cognitive dissonance, consider Roman Emperor Commodus, memorably portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2000 Oscar-winning film Gladiator. The film took some liberties, but Commodus’ father, Marcus Aurelius, the last of the “five good emperors,” is widely considered a heroic figure by historians. His seminal work of Stoic Philosophy, Meditations, mostly written while living in military field tents across central Europe, remains a widely read and remarkably accessible and relatable text. The Pax Romana ended with Marcus’ son Commodus, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Hercules, delighted in killing exotic animals, and was very proud of being left-handed. Moral of the story: children can turn out really different from their parents in just about every way that matters, i.e. personality, intelligence, character, integrity, ethical seriousness, you name it! Also, nepotism is bad.

Will nepotism kill NHANES? Hopefully not. Collecting data on Americans’ health since the early 1960s, NHANES is “the only national health survey that includes health exams and laboratory tests for participants of all ages.” NHANES is credited with paving the way for such enlightened policies as removing lead from gasoline. Nutrition researchers use NHANES to measure things like ultra-processed food consumption. According to the Administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” Assessment report, “a growing body of research associates UPFs with negative health outcomes, including in children.” Without NHANES, however, that body of research would grow more slowly. Visibility into how policies like cuts to federal food assistance programs affect consumers will also diminish. Notably, researchers have documented a link between food insecurity and ultra-processed diets, with “more severe food insecurity associated with higher intakes of ultra-processed foods.”

For now, a federal court has blocked the most recent layoffs announced during the government shutdown, so NHANES may yet survive. The same cannot be said for CDC’s three-person alcohol policy program, a 24-year old program whose work included grants to state and local health departments, and estimating the number of people who die each year from excessive alcohol. The latest figure is 178,000. In recent years, excessive alcohol use caused a gobsmacking twenty percent of deaths among adults aged 20-49, again according to the CDC Alcohol Program—the program apparently deemed “redundant” by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” apparatchiks back in April. Will the Administration’s expected alcohol-friendly dietary guidelines make excessive drinking deaths go up? The answer may have to come from outside CDC. The alcohol program’s elimination also means the loss of critical work to identify state and local policies that effectively reduce excessive drinking.

Fortunately, some congressional leaders still believe in keeping track of what’s killing us. The Senate has drafted appropriations legislation that includes $4 million of funding for the CDC’s alcohol program. That’s a 33% cut but it preserves an essential program and vital support to public and non-profit partners around the country. In its bill, the House neglects to fund the program at all. A similar story holds for CDC food safety funding.

Congress needs to step up. Unelected officials like OMB Director Russel Vought and richest-man-ever Elon Musk have presided over haphazard cuts to the federal workforce that, if allowed to proceed, will deeply harm a generation of American consumers. Eliminating the very means of measuring their radical agenda’s impact can only go forward with congressional complicity. If this Congress will not preserve federal programs critical to measuring the nation’s health and welfare, consumers should vote for representatives that will.