Kennedy faces House budget grilling over HHS cuts, vaccine policy, costs

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went before the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday with health spending, vaccine policy and public trust all colliding in one hearing room. The clearest test was not whether he could recite the Trump administration’s HHS priorities, but whether he could defend a proposed budget that would cut the department by 12.5 percent, slash $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health and eliminate a low-income energy assistance program.

Kennedy’s written testimony shifted hard toward nutrition, food safety, drug prices, fraud prevention and restrictions on children’s access to gender-affirming care. It did not address vaccination schedules or autism, a striking omission for a secretary whose public profile has long been tied to vaccine skepticism. The White House has recently urged health officials to steer their messaging toward more popular topics, and Kennedy’s opening act reflected that political calculation.

The hearing, scheduled for 9 a.m. EDT in Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building, was the first in a series of annual budget hearings on Capitol Hill tied to the administration’s 2027 HHS request, which totals about $111 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee listed Kennedy as the sole witness, underscoring how much of the day rested on one official answering for the administration’s health agenda.

Democrats were expected to press Kennedy on the issues most likely to affect patients and providers in daily life: rising health-care costs, NIH grant cancellations, vaccine confidence and the nation’s largest measles outbreak in decades. Those questions went beyond the contours of a budget hearing. They pointed to a broader struggle over whether the federal government is still willing to use public health authority aggressively, or whether it is retreating from the tools that have long underpinned immunization, research and disease response.

Bloomberg reported that Kennedy was expected to face pointed questions over controversial vaccine-policy changes, while POLITICO said the House appearance was part of a longer Capitol Hill marathon, with additional hearings before House and Senate committees next week. That schedule gives lawmakers multiple chances to force clarity on the same central question: whether the administration’s health policy is being defined by cost-cutting and culture-war messaging, or by the work of protecting vaccination, research and access to care.

For hospitals, researchers and families watching from outside Washington, the stakes are immediate. A budget that trims NIH, trims safety-net support and sidesteps vaccine policy would not stay confined to hearing-room politics. It would shape the country’s research pipeline, public health capacity and the reach of federal protection for years to come.