News

(Bloomberg) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to defend his decisions to cut thousands of staff and gut whole swaths of the federal health agency in one of his first appearances before Congress since taking office.

Kennedy will testify on his agency’s 2026 budget request in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday. He plans to tell members that he’s made progress toward President Donald Trump’s goal to shrink federal spending through “significant” workforce reductions and contract savings worth over $13 billion, while promising “more to come,” according to prepared remarks seen by Bloomberg News.

The Trump administration is asking for $94 billion for HHS and its sub-agencies — $33 billion less than last year — according to budget documents released earlier this month. The biggest cuts are focused on the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy will also testify in front of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Health Agenda

It’s not just about cutting costs. Kennedy will say to Senate members he plans to use the budget as a tool to pursue his so-called Make America Healthy Again agenda.

The means including funding for chronic disease prevention, protection from environmental toxins, nutrition, food and drug safety, services for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Also included are programs that push what he calls healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments and the effects of new technological habits, he said.

“These priorities will be reflected in the reorganization of HHS,” he said in the prepared remarks.

It’s also notable what the proposed budget cuts out: Kennedy said that the NIH will no longer issue grants “to promote radical gender ideology to the detriment of America’s youth,” or fund so-called gain-of-function research, studies that involve altering pathogens, which became controversial after Covid.

“Americans do not want their tax dollars going to initiatives that espouse radical ideologies,” Kennedy said in his prepared remarks. “We are committed to restoring a tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science — not one driven by politicized DEI, gender ideology, nor sexual identity.”

The hearing is one of the first chances lawmakers have had to question Kennedy over his sweeping changes at HHS. In March, Kennedy announced mass layoffs of 10,000 employees across the department. Total departures, including those who left voluntarily in early retirement or buyout programs, amounted to around 20% of agency staff. He pushed out top health officials that oversaw vaccine approvals, regulated the tobacco industry and ran infectious disease research.

At the CDC, the cuts led to the creation of a temporary strike force to help manage the fallout, Bloomberg reported in late April.

While Kennedy characterizes the cuts as a bid to streamline redundancies, the agency has also laid off employees conducting research in food safety labs, running firefighter health programs, providing heating assistance to people in need, working to make infant formula safer and studying childhood lead exposure.

In late March, Kennedy announced that HHS would consolidate its 28 units into 15, including a new “Administration for a Healthy America,” or AHA, that will coordinate programs targeted to improve chronic care and disease prevention, he said.

Kennedy intends to reduce regional offices from 10 to five by closing offices in high-cost cities. Research institutions within HHS will also be consolidated in NIH to “maximize effectiveness,” Kennedy said in his remarks. He also wants to shift its “focus away from foreign interests and reforms its efforts on the core research activities that align with the President’s commitment to Make America Healthy Again.”

Trafficking Accusations

In his remarks, Kennedy also took a shot at the agency’s handling of its program that shelters unaccompanied minors who migrate to the US.

Part of the massive health department’s responsibilities include sheltering children who immigrate to the US without their parents as they await immigration proceedings. The responsibility has long been a highly politicized part of the health secretary’s job.

HHS in March announced that it would stop placement of children in shelters operated by Southwest Key Programs, Inc. and would move all children to other shelters. The US Department of Justice under the Joe Biden administration sued the company in July 2024, alleging that employees had abused and harassed children in the shelters. The DOJ dismissed its lawsuit.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, issued a report in November 2024 claiming the Biden administration weakened vetting processes for sponsors, outsourcing vetting to contractors and failing to cooperate with congressional inquiries. The report followed media coverage of exploitation of migrant children.

A government watchdog report published in February found that HHS failed to provide law enforcement complete addresses for more than 31,000 unaccompanied migrant children, and most of the addresses they do have are wrong.

Kennedy described the HHS under Biden as “a collaborator in child trafficking for sex and slavery. The Biden Administration operated the UAC program like an assembly line, prioritizing the quick release of children to insufficiently vetted sponsors over the children’s safety,” according to his remarks.