Ranking Member DeLauro to Secretary Kennedy at HHS Budget Hearing: “You are endangering the health of the American people”

WASHINGTON — CongresswomanRosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee’s fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for what is a critically important hearing on President Trump’s disastrous budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Secretary Kennedy, good morning to you. We welcome you to the House Appropriations Committee for your first budget hearing.

However, I cannot thank you for the Trump Administration’s budget request to cut funding for important health programs by $33 billion. Quite frankly, I view it as a disgrace. Under your budget proposal, Americans would die of needless and preventable deaths. But before we talk about the request to cut tens of billions of dollars next year, I would like to talk about what is happening right now.

The American people are demanding help with the cost of living. But President Trump is not laser focused on the cost-of-living crisis—he is actually making it worse. He promised to fight for the working-class, but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government. And you, to destroy everything we know about good public health.

Mr. Secretary, this Administration is recklessly, and unlawfully, freezing and stealing Congressionally-appropriated funds from a wide swath of agencies, programs, and services across the government that serve the American people. Recall that this is a violation of the Constitution. The power of the purse resides with the Congress. It’s Article I, Section 9, Clause 7.

Yourself, President Trump, and Elon Musk are attacking health programs to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. And by promoting quackery, you are endangering the health of the American people with pseudoscience, fearmongering, and misinformation. 

Government should fight for the middle-class, the working-class, and the vulnerable. Not the interests of billionaires like Elon Musk. Instead, with you at the helm, the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress are destroying the crown jewels of our health system—the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

At the NIH, the world’s largest funder of lifesaving biomedical research, you and Elon Musk have fired or driven out nearly 5,000 personnel, including some of the world’s most preeminent scientists, and frozen billions of dollars in research to develop cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, women’s health, and the list goes on. China and Europe are taking advantage of this disaster by recruiting American scientists away from the United States. China wants to overtake us as the global leader in health research and innovation. You and President Trump are aiding and abetting them.

Two weeks ago, I called a hearing on the cuts to CDC because the Republican majority is refusing to hold this Administration accountable for its wanton destruction. As part of your drastic and haphazard purge of CDC, you and Elon Musk eliminated entire divisions without consideration of what is being lost. More than 70 percent of CDC’s funding is provided to state and local jurisdictions. These cuts affect families and communities in every one of our districts. These cuts are dangerous.

Peter Marks, the country’s top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, helped develop the COVID vaccines at record speed under the first Trump Administration. Dr. Marks was told to resign or be fired. In his resignation letter, Dr. Marks wrote that, quote, “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” end quote.

Mr. Secretary, Dr. Marks was talking about your misinformation. He was talking about your lies about vaccines. Mr. Secretary, you are gutting the lifesaving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies—while Republicans in the Congress say and do nothing. But the destruction of HHS is not limited to NIH, CDC, and the FDA. Mr. Secretary, you are eliminating entire agencies that have saved the lives of someone near to each and every one of us. Because of these cuts, people will die. 

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), eliminated.

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which as you know is responsible for ensuring access to health care for uninsured, isolated, and vulnerable people, eliminated.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), which was created to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies, eliminated.

The Administration for Community Living (ACL), eliminated, hurting seniors and people with disabilities.

You can make the baseless claim that you are simply reorganizing these functions of HHS all you want—it is simply a matter of fact that you cannot cut the Department’s budget and maintain all of its life-saving programs and services. HHS has closed half of its regional offices, which served 22 states and 5 territories. 20,000 HHS employees are gone.

And Republicans have set the stage to cut Medicaid benefits from people who rely on that program to see a doctor—including roughly half of our nation’s children.

HHS has terminated more than $12 billion in funding for State and local health departments—including funding for mental health and substance use prevention and treatment, sabotaging our progress in addressing the opioid crisis.   

Mr. Secretary, you are eliminating scores of CDC prevention programs, including HIV, tobacco, drowning, asthma, lead poisoning, and gun violence. Why on Earth are these the places you are terminating for so-called waste? The life of a teenager that does not become addicted to cigarettes or injured by a firearm is not waste. 

Last month, you wrote in the New York Post, and I quote: “America has the highest rates of chronic disease in the world. We rank last in terms of health among developed nations. And life expectancy is declining for many groups of Americans.” Mr. Secretary, much of what you wrote is true. But it is confounding and incomprehensible to then turn around and eliminate the CDC’s Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

And with respect to your views on vaccines, quite frankly, I believe you are promoting quackery. Under your watch, our country is now failing to contain vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles, a disease eliminated in the United States just decades ago has now claimed the lives of three Americans—including two children who died needlessly—and over 1,000 are confirmed to have contracted the disease. All while you peddle unfounded and dangerous vaccine skepticism, and spread lies and misinformation about people living with autism. 

Vaccine programs for millions of Americans, including children, so they do not get diseases, like measles, are not waste. The thousands of experts and experienced staff who help keep Americans safe from global infectious diseases like Measles, Polio, HIV, Tuberculosis, and Ebola, are not waste. These programs help save the lives of men and women and children from all walks of life in this country.

And you have decimated the Food and Drug Administration by firing 3,500 employees, and taking a wrecking ball to FDA’s food safety mandate. You talk about making our food supply healthier while gutting the support staff for critical inspections of things like baby formula. You talk about closing the Generally Recognized as Safe or GRAS loophole, which allows food companies to determine the safety of their own ingredients, something I have advocated for years—while firing staff in charge of food and chemical reassessment. 

The former Deputy Commissioner of the Human Foods Program resigned in February, writing, quote, “I was looking forward to working to pursue the department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food. It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.” End quote. That is a damning indictment of your work on food safety. 

I am worried about a future public health crisis that emerges once the Trump Administration has fully dismantled the nation’s public health system. We are currently in the midst of an outbreak of avian influenza and this administration is woefully unprepared to protect Americans and mitigate its impacts if it transforms to be transmittable from person to person.

This is all happening today—right now. We are not talking about hypotheticals or what-ifs or worst-case scenarios. This destruction has happened, and is happening, today, right now.

Even though we received President Trump’s concepts of a budget plan, we are now into May without a real budget from the White House. Mr. Secretary, in the budget outline, you are asking Congress to cut funding for health programs by $33 billion, a cut of more than 25 percent. You are asking Congress to cut CDC by nearly $4 billion and NIH research by $18 billion, and you claim to be reorganizing NIH. 

Any reorganization of NIH must go through the Congress. We need to hold public hearings and engage in a thoughtful process to incorporate the best ideas to advance NIH as the crown jewel of biomedical research. Mr. Secretary, you have no lawful authority to undertake this by yourself. These are vital institutions built up over decades that protect Americans health, and the health of people around the world. 

I do not believe the American people want less cancer research and fewer people tracking infectious diseases, but that is exactly what this budget will deliver. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis—driven in part by skyrocketing health care costs—and you, Elon Musk, and President Trump are making it worse. You are wreaking havoc at every level of our most critical health institutions. You are jeopardizing our families’ health for the sake of billionaire tax cuts. 

But we are seeing pushback at every level. The public is outraged at the enormous harms you have wrought. Dozens of courts have put restraining orders on the Administration’s actions. But courts can only play defense. Republicans in this Congress could stop the mayhem, the chaos, and the destruction today if they had the courage. But they remain silent, petrified of the President’s scorn, revenge, and retaliation. 

Those of us who serve in elected office, we are blessed, and we have the power to do something. We know what is right and we know what is wrong, and we understand the harm being wrought on the American people—we need to stand up, and not be afraid, this is the time to meet the moment.

As the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, I will never stop fighting against this dangerous dismantling of Health and Human Services and its agencies, which is jeopardizing the health, safety, and well-being of millions of American families.

Thank you, I look forward to your testimony and to the important conversations we will have in this hearing this morning.

I yield back.

###