HHS Secretary Kennedy Spars with Members of Congress Over HHS Restructuring
In appearances before two important congressional committees on Wednesday, May 14, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, repeatedly sparred with members of Congress over both the current ongoing restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and over vaccine policy at the health agency.
As Sandhya Raman and Lia DeGroot of Roll Call wrote on Wednesday evening, “Kennedy appeared before two influential panels — the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee [of the House Appropriations Committee] and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — that are examining the Trump administration’s $94 billion budget request for the department in fiscal 2026. Kennedy defended that request as well as the government’s response to a measles outbreak and proposed changes to biomedical research. But lawmakers seeking answers on the major reorganization, which included terminating thousands of employees, left without answers,” they wrote.
Raman and DeGroot quoted Kennedy as stating that, “As of 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, we are under a court order not to do any further planning on the reorganization, and I’ve been advised by my attorneys … not to talk about it,” he told House appropriators, adding that some programs under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were transferred to the newly formed Administration for a Healthy America. “I’m not permitted to talk in any more detail.”
Ranking member of the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Rosa DeLauro (D.-Conn.), “asked Kennedy for a list of which programs have been eliminated under the reorganization, why they were chosen and what criteria were used,” Raman and DeGroot reported. “That is information that this committee needs in order to be able to do our job in terms of appropriating funds,” DeLauro said. And, they wrote, “Kennedy said he would ‘gladly provide’ her with that information but said the court order prohibits him from doing so. The health secretary similarly cited the order in declining to provide details to a question from Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., about how the reorganization changes oversight of the 340B drug program.” And, they added, “It wasn’t clear which lawsuit challenging the reorganization gave rise to the order. The department faces more than 100 lawsuits across the country on the issue.”
And, they noted, “The Trump administration has moved to reshape the nation’s public health infrastructure through eliminating roughly 20,000 jobs, ousting top career officials, threatening billions of dollars in federally funded scientific research and proposing a major reorganization of the health department. In his opening remarks before the House panel, Kennedy said “an exploding debt is a social determinant of health.” He added: “We must spend smarter.”
Axios’s Avery Lotz wrote on Wednesday afternoon that “Kennedy, in his opening remarks of Wednesday's House budget hearing, said the solution to health crises in the U.S. is not ‘throwing more money at it.’ He said the administration's budget request outlines several priorities for his department, including consolidating programs to address mental health, addressing nutrition and ‘healthy lifestyles,’ eliminating DEI funding and ending research ‘based on radical gender ideology,’ she reported.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Lauren Weber and Rachel Roubein wrote on Wednesday afternoon that “The hearings, the first time the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared in front of Congress since being sworn in, were marked by intense exchanges with lawmakers over the future of the nation’s health and interrupted by protesters. While Kennedy found common ground across the aisle on moves to ban food dyes, eliminate pharmaceutical advertising and reduce drug pricing, he sparred with lawmakers over vaccines as well as the massive reshaping of his agency,” they wrote.
Further, Weber and Roubein wrote, “HHS has said the changes will save $1.8 billion annually, as well as promised a reduction of HHS’s 28 divisions to 15. Kennedy dodged some questions related to cuts to his department, saying he is “under a court order not to do any further planning on the reorganization” and has been advised by his attorneys not to talk about it. He repeatedly stressed his efforts to do more with less. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Maryland) pressed Kennedy on who made the decisions regarding massive cuts to HHS: billionaire Elon Musk, who has led the Department of Government Efficiency, or Kennedy himself.”
Per that, “’Elon Musk gave us help in figuring out where there was waste, fraud and abuse in the department, but it was up to me to make the decision,’ Kennedy said. ‘And there are many instances where I pushed back and said, ‘We don’t want to; that would hurt us to eliminate that group.’ Later in the hearing in response to questions from Rep. Riley Moore (R-West Virginia), Kennedy said 328 employees who had been fired have been reinstated at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), one of the hardest-hit centers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one-third of those reinstated were based in Morgantown, West Virginia.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times’s Cheryl Gay Stolberg wrote on Wednesday afternoon that “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a defiant defense on Wednesday of his drastic overhaul of federal health agencies, insisting to members of Congress that he had ‘not fired any working scientists’ and was ‘not withholding money for lifesaving research’ despite evidence to the contrary. In back-to-back appearances before House and Senate committees, Mr. Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, also made clear that he did not think the health secretary should be in the business of making vaccine recommendations. He ducked questions about whether, if he had young children today, they would be inoculated against measles, chickenpox or polio. ‘I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me,’ the health secretary said.”
What’s more, Stolberg wrote that, “After weeks of controversy about his plans for autism research, Mr. Kennedy also testified that federally funded studies should focus solely on identifying ‘environmental toxins’ — a term that Mr. Kennedy’s critics say is code for vaccines. ‘I’m told that there was a 20-to-1 research ratio for genetic causes over the past 20 years,’ he said, adding: ‘I believe that was because they did not want to look at the environmental exposure because they were scared. So I don’t think we should be funding that genetic work anymore.’”
