Vaccines, budget cuts and affordability: Takeaways from RFK Jr.’s gauntlet of congressional hearings

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. concluded a marathon series of hearings with federal lawmakers on Wednesday, during which he laid blame for measles outbreaks and declining vaccination rates across the country and touted several initiatives that he said make health care more affordable.

Testifying before various Senate and House committees over several days this week and last, Kennedy was tasked with defending President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 budget, which would increase defense spending while cutting funding for Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services by more than 12%.

As lawmakers from both parties expressed concern about reducing or eliminating programs and research funding, Kennedy acknowledged the cuts were “painful” but said they were necessary to address the federal government’s record $39 trillion deficit.

When Democrats spoke out, Kennedy became more defiant, sometimes even shouting out his rebuttals — even though some of them didn’t match the facts. He accused several Democratic lawmakers of grandstanding, making things up and looking for sound bites for meaningful answers.

Here are the takeaways from Kennedy’s budget hearings:

One of the key fights that shaped Kennedy’s interactions with Democratic lawmakers was over who bore responsibility for declining childhood immunization rates and measles outbreaks that have ravaged the country over the past year, threatening the country’s measles-elimination status. Kennedy’s refrain was consistent: It’s not my fault.

“It has nothing to do with me,” Kennedy said Tuesday of the surge in measles across the country over the past year. He noted a global increase in measles cases, including in other countries such as Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Kennedy, who spent years as an anti-vaccine activist before entering politics and said in 2021 that he had urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when children should get vaccinated, disputed accusations that he was anti-vaccine, calling himself “pro-science.”

Throughout the hearings, he sought to focus on HHS initiatives unrelated to vaccines — which are part of a broader administrative pivot toward less controversial health topics like nutritious food.

Kennedy argued that fewer Americans are getting vaccinated because they have lost confidence in government recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he was working to restore that trust. In fact, surveys show that trust in federal health agencies continued to decline during Kennedy’s tenure.

Rep. Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, argued that Kennedy’s views on vaccines caused a “ripple effect” that led mothers to not give their babies common vitamin K shots at birth to prevent brain hemorrhages.

“I never said anything about vitamin K,” Kennedy said.

“That’s exactly the point,” Schrier responded.

Kennedy, however, got credit from Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who said his work was crucial in helping the state manage a worrisome measles outbreak over the past year.

“We would not be on the right side of this epidemic without your leadership,” Scott told Kennedy.

Almost every time Democrats brought up the nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, largely due to new work requirements for enrollees, Kennedy countered by saying there were no cuts to Medicaid.

“Only in Washington is this considered a reduction,” Kennedy told New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján on Wednesday.

Kennedy cited a Congressional Budget Office report showing that Medicaid spending is expected to increase about 47 percent over the next decade. But experts say his analysis of the report is misleading and politicized and that increased spending reflects factors such as inflation and population growth.

“This is a tired old argument that has been used by conservatives to justify spending cuts by saying that if spending continues to increase in nominal terms, somehow there has been no reduction,” said Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University. “The federal government is spending almost a trillion dollars less than it would have spent in the absence of this legislation. »

One of the top concerns voters have in the 2026 midterm elections is affordability, including the skyrocketing costs of health care and health insurance. This was not lost on those questioning Kennedy, as lawmakers from both parties raised the issue.

On Tuesday, Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican from Oregon, shared the story of his brother who pays $26,000 a year for his health coverage.

“What the hell can I say to him and say? ‘Hey, the administration is working to bring these prices down?'” he asked Kennedy.

Kennedy, for his part, cited several Trump administration initiatives aimed at lowering prices, including the White House’s TrumpRx website for discounted drugs and Trump’s so-called Most Favored Nations agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

Pressed by senators, Kennedy pledged to provide details of these deals that did not include proprietary information or trade secrets. Some Democrats wanted him to do more.

“Why don’t you make a deal yourself? he asked Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. You’ve had the power to do this for 20 years and you haven’t done it.”

To achieve a more than 12 percent reduction in HHS’s more than $100 billion budget, the Trump administration is proposing to cut about $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health budget and eliminate a series of other programs and initiatives, including a home energy assistance program for low-income households.

Several senators asked Kennedy why different areas were being removed. The NIH cuts, in particular, have sparked bipartisan outcry.

“There’s an argument to be made that we’re giving China our lunch,” said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Kennedy was candid that neither he nor others in his agency wanted to see the budget cuts, which he called “painful.”

“There are a lot of cuts going on at the agency that no one wants,” he said.