Kennedy Defends HHS Budget, Staffing Cuts in Face of Democrats’ Criticism

At a hearing before a Senate panel Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the case that he’s running a cost-efficient, yet effective, HHS.

“When my team and I took the helm at HHS, we set out with clear goals,” Kennedy said told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

“First, we aimed to make America healthy again, with a special focus on the chronic disease epidemic. Second, we committed to delivering more efficient, effective, and responsive service to over 100 million Americans who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.

Kennedy came to the committee to defend budget and staffing cuts to his department. That was generally not well received by committee Democrats. “You are here to defend cutting [the National Institutes of Health] by half,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. 

“I think the cuts that are now proposed by the NIH are going to hurt,” Kennedy acknowledged to Murray. “Listen, there’s no agency head in the government, like myself, that wants to see their budget cut.”

Murray would not let him continue to defend the cuts.

Kennedy also faced off with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who alleged that the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Medicaid reforms were cuts that would kick Americans off Medicaid.

“As it stands right now, [the bill] cuts Medicaid in the Affordable Care Act by more than $715 billion, which the [Congressional Budget Office] has estimated would eliminate health insurance for 13.7 million Americans,” said Sanders in reference to the committee’s legislative text, which would institute work requirements and citizenship verification for Medicaid recipients.

“The cuts are not true cuts,” replied Kennedy. “The cuts are eliminations of waste, abuse, and fraud.”

Sanders, saying he was short on time, did not allow Kennedy to list the groups of people who would no longer get Medicaid payments, such as illegal immigrants and nonworking but able-bodied adults.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was among the friendliest senators to Kennedy, praising the cuts as a way to limit frivolous research grants.

“One of the reasons I think we need to look at NIH and other grant-making organizations is: If you keep giving them the same amounts [of funding], you’ll keep getting the same frivolous grants.”

Paul then went through a litany of research studies, such as a $660,000 grant “to study the impact of microaggressions on obesity-related eating in Latinx Americans.”

Paul was pleased by Kennedy discussing how he had scaled back controversial “gain of function” viral research, which may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are three leaks a week, globally, from BSL-4 labs, and any of those could be cataclysmic for humanity,” said Kennedy, referencing “biosafety level 4” labs, which are the most dangerous.

“We also declared the end of gain of function studies that will allow those kinds of leaks to continue,” he added. that will allow those kinds of leaks to continue,” he added.

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