Kennedy, who was to sit before the Senate’s health committee later in the day, appeared at a House appropriations hearing to defend the White House’s requested budget for his agency. The request includes a $500 million boost for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to promote nutrition and healthier lifestyles while making deep cuts to infectious disease prevention, medical research maternal health, low-income heat assistance and preschool programs.
“When we consolidate them, Democrats say they’re eliminating them,” Kennedy said.
But Democrats argued that some of that consolidation will ultimately impact the work that the federal government is doing to reduce overdose deaths, study causes of cancer or offer suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ teens.
Rep. Madeline Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, pressed Kennedy on his plans to shutter the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency that oversees a national suicide hotline, surveys Americans on their drug use annually and provides funding and guidance for addiction treatment centers. Kennedy plans to fold it into his new Administration for Healthy Americans.
“We call that shift and shaft,” Dean said of Kennedy’s plans.
Several Republicans, too, sprinkled hints of concerns about Kennedy’s approach to the job throughout the hearing.
“I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride … we better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a lot more dentists,” Simpson added.
Democrat Bonnie Watson-Coleman of New Jersey asked “why, why, why” Kennedy would lay off nearly all the staff that oversees the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4.1 billion in heating assistance to needy families. The program is slated to be eliminated from the agency’s budget.
Kennedy said that advocates warned him those cuts “will end up killing people” but that President Donald Trump believes his energy policy will lower costs. If that doesn’t work, Kennedy said, he would restore funding for the program.
Kennedy heads next to to the Senate, where many eyes will be on his dialogue with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who extracted a number of guarantees from Kennedy about his approach to vaccines.
“Can I trust that that is now in the past?” Cassidy asked Kennedy at the time.
Kennedy, who has rejected the anti-vaccine label, has regularly said that he is “pro-safety” and wants more research on vaccines, although decades of real-world use and research have concluded they safely prevent deadly diseases in children.
“His longstanding advocacy has always focused on ensuring that vaccines, and other medical interventions, meet the highest standards of safety and are supported by gold-standard science,” Health and Human Services said in a statement. “As he did during confirmation, Secretary Kennedy is prepared to address questions surrounding this topic.”
