Kennedy’s marathon appearances before House and Senate panels concluded Wednesday as he worked to defend President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 budget and to respond to sustained questioning about public health and program funding. In testimony over multiple days, the Health and Human Services secretary was repeatedly pulled back to the same flashpoints: measles and childhood vaccination declines, Democrats’ claims about Medicaid reductions, and whether the administration’s approach will lower health costs for families.
A central thread through his exchanges was a dispute over responsibility for the rise in measles cases and falling childhood vaccination rates. Kennedy told lawmakers that the increase in measles over the past year “has nothing to do with me,” and he pointed to a broader global rise in measles cases, including in other countries such as Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Kennedy also confronted questions framed around his past anti-vaccine activism. He said he is “pro-science,” disputed accusations that he is anti-vaccine, and referenced his earlier political posture urging people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when children should get vaccines. Throughout the hearings, he sought to pivot toward HHS initiatives he said were aimed at less contentious health topics, including nutritious eating, rather than focusing on vaccines.
On the measles-and-vaccination fight, Kennedy also faced an exchange with Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington, who argued that Kennedy’s views created a “spillover effect.” Schrier linked the vaccination debate to vitamin K injections that are commonly given at birth to prevent brain bleeding, and Kennedy responded, “I’ve never said anything about vitamin K.” Schrier replied, “That’s exactly the point.” Kennedy did receive praise from Republicans during the process, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who told Kennedy, “We would not be on the right side of this outbreak without your leadership,” referring to the state’s management of a measles outbreak over the past year.
The budget hearings also put Medicaid at the center of the fight. Kennedy forcefully denied that his budget would cut Medicaid, pushing back whenever lawmakers raised the nearly $1 trillion figure Democrats associated with Medicaid cuts over the next decade, including those they described as being created through new work requirements for enrollees. In one exchange with Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat, Kennedy told him, “Only in Washington is it considered a cut.”
Democrats and other lawmakers challenged Kennedy’s framing of the Medicaid number, and the dispute became part of a broader argument over what the CBO projected. Kennedy cited a Congressional Budget Office report that estimated Medicaid outlays would increase by about 47% over the next decade, while experts in the hearings characterized his presentation as politicized. Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University, said, “This is an old, sort of tired argument that’s been used by conservatives to justify spending cuts by saying, well, if spending is still growing in nominal terms, somehow there wasn’t a cut,” adding that, in his view, “The federal government is spending nearly a trillion dollars less than it otherwise would have in the absence of the legislation.”
Beyond the vaccine and Medicaid exchanges, the hearings reflected political pressure over health care affordability heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Lawmakers of both parties pressed Kennedy on costs for health care and health insurance, with Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican from Oregon, describing the expense faced by his brother, who pays $26,000 per year for coverage. Bentz asked Kennedy what he could tell his brother, saying, “What in the world can I go back to him and say? ‘Hey, the administration is working on trying to drive these prices down?’”
Kennedy pointed to Trump administration initiatives that he said were designed to lower prices, including the White House’s TrumpRx website for discounted drugs and Trump’s “most favored nations” deals with pharmaceutical companies. When senators asked him for more details about those arrangements, he pledged to provide specifics that would not include proprietary information or trade secrets. Still, some Democrats pressed for broader action, and Kennedy jabbed back at Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, telling him, “Why don’t you do an agreement yourself? he said,” according to the hearing account.
Kennedy’s testimony also included repeated acknowledgments that the budget proposals would mean reductions to programs inside HHS. The administration is proposing more than a 12% cut to the department’s budget of more than $100 billion, and Kennedy said the cuts were “painful.” He said, “There’s a lot of cuts to the agency that nobody wants,” and he argued they were necessary to address the federal government’s record $39 trillion deficit.
Senators also focused on what they viewed as high-profile targets within the package, including proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health that drew bipartisan concern. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said, “There’s an argument to be made that we’re handing China our lunch,” framing the NIH reductions as part of a larger national competitiveness debate, as Kennedy continued defending the administration’s overall proposal.
Even as Kennedy faced repeated attacks from Democrats, some Republicans credited him with handling the public health challenges of the past year, while Democrats questioned whether the administration’s budget approach and priorities align with the needs of patients and families. The overall exchanges left lawmakers across party lines emphasizing two themes—how to pay for health care and how to respond to threats to vaccination coverage—while Kennedy tried to re-center the discussion on budget math, proposed reforms, and what he said HHS would do next.