By Sarah Owermohle, CNN

(CNN) — Lawmakers repeatedly pressed US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy on canceled medical research and mass layoffs during Wednesday hearings on Trump administration proposals that could lead to even broader cuts.

Democrats on the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee repeatedly asked the secretary to explain cuts this year to health care programs, medical research and staffing before discussing a 2026 budget that would shrink the health agencies further. Kennedy also testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

Kennedy insisted he would spend the funds that Congress appropriated in the 2026 budget according to law. But Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, including ranking member Steny Hoyer and health subcommittee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, were focused on the agency’s spending this year, for budgets already authorized.

“We have to really keep a clear line here between a questionable proposal for ‘26 and what is going on right now against the legislation that we have passed and that has been signed into law,” DeLauro said.

The administration’s cancellation of National Institutes of Health grants amounted to $2.7 billion in eliminated research, much higher than previous estimates, according to a report issued by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday.

In a post on X on Tuesday, HHS called the report “unequivocally false” and said it was politically motivated.

The secretary defended HHS funding and job cuts in the House subcommtitee hearing, saying that the slashes had reduced redundancy and that the proposed 2026 budget would streamline programs further.

But he also seemed to distance himself from the eliminations led by the US Department of Government Efficiency and said he had protected certain programs, including HeadStart.

“There were many instances where I said ‘That would hurt us,’ ” he told the House committee.

Questions on vaccination

Kennedy also told House lawmakers Wednesday that Americans should not take advice from him on vaccinations.

“My opinions on vaccines are irrelevant,” he said. “Everybody should make that decision. I seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.”

The comments came after Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, asked Kennedy whether he would vaccinate his children against measles today. “Probably for measles,” the secretary answered before adding that vaccination is a personal choice.

Pocan followed up with questions about whether Kennedy would vaccinate his children against chickenpox and polio today. Kennedy noted that chickenpox shots are not required in Europe and said again he did not want to be seen as advising families.

“What we’re trying to do is to lay out the pros and cons accurately, as we understand them,” he said.

Kennedy has previously disclosed that his children received the recommended childhood schedule of vaccines when they were younger. As founder of the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, he has also criticized that schedule and claimed that the side effects of certain vaccines — including unproven links to autism — outweigh their benefits.

The secretary announced in April that health agencies would start a massive research and testing effort to distill the causes of autism, citing “environmental toxins” and other exposures.

Efforts to tackle racial disparities

In his opening statement at the House subcommittee hearing, Kennedy said that one of the top priorities for the agency’s budget was to “eliminate DEI funding and redirect resources toward real poverty reduction.”

Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey pushed him on the topic, highlighting vast racial disparities in maternal mortality in the US and other health issues.

“Few things enrage me more than the racist attacks I see this administration carrying out by embarking on an ignorant crusade to rid the government of any programs that are working to improve the lives of Black Americans,” Watson Coleman said. “The administration has moved to ban the words Black, race, bias, minority, oppression, prejudice, discrimination, disparity and racism. Any grant application on federal programs that include these words had them immediately stripped.”

These actions are an attempt “to legitimize racial discrimination,” she said, and low-income minorities will suffer the consequences most.

“It should not be controversial to make right a health care system that was not built to help people like me, to take my concerns, my pain, my health very seriously in this country,” Watson Coleman said. “How exactly will HHS banning the words that we use to describe ourselves make us healthier?”

Kennedy said that President Donald Trump has a vision for a “colorblind administration,” akin to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideals.

“The commitment is there. We’re just reorganizing,” he said.

But he balked when Watson Coleman pressured him for rationale behind eliminating a program to help low-income households with their energy bills to have heat in the winter and stay cool in the summer: the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.

“My time has expired,” Kennedy said.

“Well then, so has your legitimacy,” Watson Coleman said.

Only when prompted to follow up did Kennedy offer a brief explanation, saying that the administration’s broader energy policy aims to bring energy costs down in general.

“If it doesn’t happen, then Congress is welcome – and they should – appropriate the money for LIHEAP, and I will spend it,” Kennedy said. ”I already allocated $400 million from LIHEAP during the last 100 days, and I will continue to do and get that funding to the people who need it in this country if the fuel costs do not go down.”

Lead program cuts

Kennedy suggested at the Senate hearing that experts in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead poisoning prevention program were fired in error during the agency’s sweeping cuts in April.

During questioning by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, on the impact that the lead program cuts might have on a lead contamination crisis in Milwaukee public schools, Kennedy agreed that childhood lead poisoning is “an extremely significant concern.”

Baldwin then asked, “Do you intend to eliminate this branch at CDC? Yes or no?”

“No, we do not,” Kennedy said.

It’s the second time Kennedy has suggested that lead experts at the CDC were cut in error. When asked during an appearance in April about cuts to the program, he responded, “There are some programs that are being cut that are being reinstated. I believe that’s one of them.”

An HHS spokesperson later said that the CDC’s lead program wouldn’t be reinstated but that the work would continue through a different CDC office, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

However, experts in the CDC’s lead program have not been rehired, according to Dr. Eric Svendsen, who was director of the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which included the lead poisoning prevention program.

The entire division and all of its programs were cut during the April 1 layoffs. “We are all still RIFd,” Svendsen confirmed Wednesday.

Asked for clarification Wednesday, an agency official told CNN, “As HHS finalizes its detailed reorganization plans, the Department will be looking into all strategic programs and priorities for the Secretary and the nation. The work of this program will continue.”

Kennedy has reinstated some other workers at CDC. In an exchange with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington earlier Wednesday, Kennedy said that he had reinstated 328 workers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Morgantown, West Virginia, and another site. Those offices worked on mine safety and on health issues in first responders after the response to the September 11 attacks, he said.

“The work on mine safety will continue,” Kennedy said. “We understand it’s critically important function. And I did not want to see it end.”

Murray said other NIOSH workers, including those at an office in Spokane, Washington, have not been reinstated, however.

“I would just say you can’t fire 90% of the people and assume the work gets done,” she said.

Micah Niemeier-Walsh, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3840, representing NIOSH employees in Cincinnati, said in a statement Wednesday that “Some NIOSH employees have been reinstated, however, many critical functions of NIOSH remain negatively impacted by the Reductions in Force. … The union is determined to continue to advocate for full reinstatement of all NIOSH employees. All NIOSH programs are important for the health and safety of working peoeple in this country.”

Some workers at the US Food and Drug Administration have also had their firings reversed, including staffers handling Freedom of Information Act requests, those who negotiate user fees and some laboratory staff.

Additionally, more than a dozen scientists at the FDA’s Moffett Lab in Illinois focusing on food safety had their RIF notices reversed, according to a person familiar with the situation who declined to be named because they’re not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.

Interrupted by protesters

Minutes into the Senate hearing on Wednesday afternoon, protestors interrupted yelling “RFK kills people with AIDS” and “Congress kills” before security forcefully escorted them from the room. Other attendees sat through the hearing with large stickers on their clothing saying “Anti-vax, Anti-Science, Anti-American” next to an image of Kennedy.

Kennedy resumed his prepared remarks after the protestors exited.

“Let me be clear,” he said, “we intend to make the Trump HHS not just the most effective but also the most compassionate in US history.”

CNN’s Deidre McPhillips, Brenda Goodman and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.