Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a defiant defense on Wednesday of his drastic overhaul of federal health agencies as House Democrats accused him of violating the law by shuttering whole divisions and cutting funding appropriated by Congress for medical research.
“We are not withholding money for lifesaving research,” Mr. Kennedy insisted. After a fiery back and forth, Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, looked disgusted. “Unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
He faced similar accusations from Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former Democratic leader.
The sharp exchanges on Wednesday morning came during Mr. Kennedy’s testimony before the appropriations panel, his first appearance on Capitol Hill since becoming health secretary. He will also appear on Wednesday afternoon before the Senate health committee, whose Republican chairman will call on him to explain to Americans how his reforms “will make their lives easier, not harder.”
The back-to-back appearances were scheduled so that Mr. Kennedy could promote President Trump’s budget for the Department of Health and Human Services for the next fiscal year.
But he is also facing sharp questions about the huge reductions he has already imposed on research grants and jobs, which key Democrats have condemned as part of what they call Mr. Trump’s “war on science.”
Mr. Trump has published only the broad outlines of his budget plan, which calls for deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In his opening remarks to the House committee, Mr. Kennedy said that the cuts will save money “without impacting critical services,” according to a copy of his remarks.
The budget blueprint “recognizes the fiscal challenges our country faces today, and the need to update and redirect our investments to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world.”
The remake of the health department, engineered in part by Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, includes cutting 20,000 jobs — one-quarter of the health work force. It also collapses entire agencies, including those devoted to mental health and addiction treatment, and emergency preparedness, into a new, ill-defined “Administration for a Healthy America.”
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the health committee chairman, is expected to call on Mr. Kennedy to articulate “a clearly defined plan or objective,” according to an excerpt from his prepared remarks. Mr. Cassidy voted to confirm Mr. Kennedy despite intense misgivings about his views on vaccines.
Mr. Cassidy asked Mr. Kennedy to testify about the job cuts at the health department last month, but the secretary did not appear.
“Much of the conversation around H.H.S.’s agenda has been set by anonymous sources in the media and individuals with a bias against the president,” Mr. Cassidy’s remarks say. “Americans need direct reassurance from the administration, from you Mr. Secretary, that its reforms will make their lives easier, not harder.”
That may be a tall order. A recent poll by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, found that a majority of the public opposed major cuts to staffing and spending at the nation’s health agencies. A majority of Americans said the Trump administration was “recklessly making broad cuts to programs and staff, including some that are necessary for agencies to function.”
In anticipation of the hearing, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the ranking member on the health committee, released a report on Tuesday that accused Mr. Trump of waging an “unprecedented, illegal and outrageous attack on science and scientists.” The report found, for instance, that Mr. Trump cut cancer research by 31 percent over the first three months of this year, compared with the same time frame last year.
“Trump’s war on science is an attack against anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. “The American people do not want us to slash cancer research in order to give more tax breaks for billionaires.”
Mr. Kennedy, one of the nation’s most vocal vaccine skeptics, also faced questions from Ms. DeLauro about his management of a measles outbreak that began in West Texas, which has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult, and has now sickened more than 1,000 people in 30 states, according to the C.D.C.
Mr. Kennedy has offered only a tepid endorsement of vaccination. He has acknowledged that vaccines are an effective way of preventing the spread of measles. But he has insisted that the choice to vaccinate should be voluntary.
He has instead promoted treating the disease after infection with alternative therapies, including cod liver oil, which contains vitamin A — a remedy that doctors said had sickened some children who took too much of it. Ms. DeLauro accused him of “promoting quackery.”
Democrats are also expected to press Mr. Kennedy on how the cuts are affecting clinical trials.
Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who serves on the health committee but is also the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, hosted a round-table discussion last week at Seattle Children’s Research Institute to put a spotlight, her office said, on “what’s at stake for patients and families as Trump takes a wrecking ball to this research.”
In an emailed statement on Tuesday, Ms. Murray complained that Mr. Kennedy was “overdue to testify” after “no-showing” when Mr. Cassidy invited him in April.
