Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday was dominated by one question: Who, exactly, is directing the sweeping cuts to the nation’s federal health research and infrastructure?
“Is it DOGE?” ranking member Sen. Tammy Baldwin asked bluntly.
Kennedy didn’t give a clear answer. And when asked by Sen. Dick Durbin about cuts to tobacco regulation personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, Kennedy said he “didn’t know about those cuts.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s part of the RIFs, in which case those people were not fired, they were put on administrative leave,” Kennedy added, referring to reductions in force.
Kennedy’s appearance highlighted a tension that has been apparent since he was confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year. Making America healthy again is going to take resources, but the White House has proposed a 30% cut to HHS’s budget.
DOGE has reportedly played a significant role in deciding which programs at HHS should be cut. The New York Times has identified six DOGE personnel who have been working within HHS, and NIH employees told NOTUS earlier this year that DOGE personnel were visiting the agency and firing people on the spot.
Kennedy’s visits to the House Committee on Appropriations and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last week were marked by lawmakers accusing him of crippling programs across HHS, eliciting frustrated outbursts from Kennedy. On Tuesday, senators seemed more wise to the balancing act between President Donald Trump’s budget goals and the MAHA movement that Kennedy is trying to pull off.
“Secretary Kennedy, listening to your testimony last week, frankly, left me pretty confused and concerned about what is happening at your department,” Sen. Patty Murray said. “You repeatedly claimed that staffing and funding cuts that have been reported on publicly, and even confirmed by your department staff, are not happening. So either you’re lying or you’re not the one making the decisions.”
Kennedy had a more direct answer to which programs he thinks should receive more funding. When Sen. Susan Collins asked Kennedy what programs he would like to fund if HHS was able to submit a list of “unfunded priorities” to Congress, as the Department of Defense does, Kennedy had a long list ready to go: infertility, early puberty in girls, the disappearance of bees, soil microbiome changes, Alzheimers, colorectal cancer in children.
Murray and other committee members — Democrats and Republicans alike — pointed out to the secretary how the proposed cuts would harm his own goals.
Chair Shelley Moore Capito questioned Kennedy about the impacts of HHS’s proposed cap on indirect costs funding for universities.
Kennedy insisted that the cuts, and others pointed out as harmful to HHS priorities, would not have a significant impact, either because they didn’t happen at all or because officials are going to come up with a new, better plan.
“I could talk to you right now in detail about some of the alternatives that we are considering,” Kennedy told Capito. He didn’t say specifically what those alternatives are.
But even with the restrictions posed by the Trump administration’s budget cuts, Kennedy’s MAHA agenda was still enough to alarm some lawmakers — including Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who took aim at MAHA Commission’s planned review of some commonly used pesticides.
“I trust these reports are not true, and that this initial assessment, prepared over the course of three months, is not intended to serve any hidden agendas,” Hyde-Smith said. “Hidden agendas such as suggesting that products that have undergone the EPA pesticide approval process, which is widely considered to have the most rigorous standards in the world, are unsafe.”
Kennedy assured Hyde-Smith that he would not do anything that could harm industrial-scale farmers.
“We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model,” Kennedy said.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.