Secretary Kennedy Testifies on the FY2027 HHS Budget Before the House Ways and Means Committee
April 16, 2026 · Ways and Means Committee Republicans · 4:36:35
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What happened
The House Ways and Means Committee convened a full-committee hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as its sole witness. In his opening remarks, the chairman said that despite $5.3 trillion in annual health-care spending, more than six in ten Americans have at least one chronic disease, faulted misaligned incentives that concentrate reimbursement on patients already sick, and thanked Kennedy for distributing the first installment of funds from the $50 billion rural health transformation program enacted in the working families tax cuts, as the chairman stated it.
In his opening statement, Kennedy said he appeared to discuss the President’s fiscal year 2027 budget request and that the country stands at a generational turning point, with children the sickest generation in modern history after decades of failed policy, captured agencies and profit-driven systems, as he stated it. He said the administration is ending the era of federal policies that fueled the chronic disease epidemic and replacing them with policies that put Americans’ health first, and closed by saying the chronic disease burden can be reversed and public health improved at lower cost, according to his testimony.
In questioning, Kennedy described flipping the food pyramid and issuing new dietary guidelines as the beginning: he said the guidelines he inherited were 453 pages, incomprehensible and written by food industry lobbyists, and that a dozen of the country’s best nutritionists worked 11 months to produce science-based guidelines with every recommendation cited to multiple peer-reviewed publications, as he stated it. He said the next step is driving the changes into dietary culture, including through food subsidy programs with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, according to his testimony. On screening, he said prevention screening is absolutely critical, that the committee deciding on procedures for CMS compensation had been, in his words, lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years, and that HHS is bringing in new members, holding more frequent meetings with transparency for the first time, and making large investments at NIH in better screening science, including for Alzheimer’s, as he stated it.
Members also pressed Kennedy on fraud enforcement, including cases in which President Trump commuted or pardoned convicted Medicare fraud defendants; Kennedy said he did not know anything about the specific case raised and that the application of anti-fraud enforcement has not been bipartisan, as he stated it. Other members commended the MAHA Commission and the administration’s pivot from, in one member’s words, reactionary sick care toward prevention and rural health access, according to the hearing record.
Why it matters
The hearing is Kennedy’s formal defense of the fiscal year 2027 HHS budget request before the tax-writing committee — the venue where his dietary-guidelines rewrite, rural-health fund stewardship and screening agenda meet the members who control the programs’ funding.
Sources: Ways and Means Committee Republicans, “Full Committee Hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”, 2026-04-16 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-04-16). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.
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