Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Defends Cuts to Health Agency Funding

(SeaPRwire) –   The 2027 budget proposal from President Donald Trump allocates $111.1 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that supervises core health bodies including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This sum represents a 12.5% cut from the current fiscal year’s budget, and includes ongoing reductions to research grants as well as programs focused on delivering health services for women and children.

At an April 21 hearing held by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, subcommittee vice chair Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin opened proceedings with a forecast: “I expect Congress to reject this budget request, just like we did last year,” she said. “It makes the Administration’s priorities clear: more money for war, less money for programs helping Americans here at home.”

Appearing to testify before the subcommittee, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fielded questions covering a wide range of topics, including the lowered spending for health programs. “Nobody in the agency wants to cut these programs,” he said. “It’s Congress’ choice about whether to do it or not. It’s not my choice.” When Washington Senator Patty Murray asked if he had pushed back against Trump over the proposed cuts to HHS’s budget, Kennedy responded by offering justifications for the reductions at the National Institutes of Health, where he said “a lot of the money was wasted; I can read you the kind of studies, the insane studies that NIH was doing before I got there.” He went on to name several examples of these studies, which involved “gender-affirming hormone therapy” and “transgender and gender-diverse adults.”

Kennedy conceded that the cancellation of critical grants for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) earlier this year was “a mistake…an overcorrection” that he reversed within 24 hours after being notified of the decision.

When asked about canceled grants for cancer and other vaccine research, Kennedy stated he had approved funding for cancer vaccines and a universal flu vaccine—“so I’m not anti-vaccine. The $500 million that we cancelled were for vaccines that don’t work…mRNA, we now know, does not work for respiratory illnesses” (a claim that is not supported by scientific evidence). Baldwin later pushed back against Kennedy’s statement about mRNA vaccine effectiveness, entering a New England Journal of Medicine paper into the official record that contradicts his claim.

New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen questioned Kennedy about funds HHS is currently holding that are owed to GAVI, the global public-private partnership that provides vaccines to children worldwide. Congress approved $300 million for the organization, but “it is your department, and you personally, who is holding up funding for GAVI,” Shaheen told Kennedy. He acknowledged he had concerns over releasing the funds, including that GAVI provides funding to the World Health Organization, which the U.S. is no longer a member of following Trump’s withdrawal, and that GAVI uses an older formulation of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine. But he agreed to assign an HHS staff member to work with Shaheen’s office to resolve the GAVI payment issue. “When 1.5 million children are at stake, it seems to me like those are issues that we ought to be able to resolve,” she said.