‘Shirtless in a Hot Tub with Kid Rock’: Congressional Democrats Question RFK Jr’s Priorities

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Thursday that he is not content with how spending cuts to programs that support lower-income Americans afford food will affect his efforts to strengthen robust eating habits.

“Am I happy with the cuts? No, I’m not happy with the cuts,” Kennedy said during a lengthy hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, one of several congressional panels before which he will testify in the coming days.

Kennedy added that President Donald Trump and White House Budget Director Russ Vought also didn’t really want to propose cuts to funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, often called WIC, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

“No one wants cuts. Russ Vought doesn’t want cuts. President Trump doesn’t,” he said. “But we have $39 trillion in debt.”

The Democratic Wisconsin Republican who asked questions then referred to Kennedy’s comments earlier in the hearing about Froot Loops, when he stated that “it’s not even food. It’s just poison.”

Moore noted that cereal is “much cheaper than good, healthy food.”

Root loops covers corn flour mixture, sugar, wheat flour, whole grain oat flour, modified food starch and other ingredients.

Trump supports cuts for HHS

Trump administration budget request for the fiscal year beginning October 1, it proposes that Congress augment defense spending by more than half a trillion dollars, an augment of 43%, and that the Legislature reduce domestic spending by 10%.

However, it was suggested that Congress reduce HHS spending by $15.8 billion, or 12.5%, to $111.1 billion lawmakers largely rejected he proposed cuts to the department’s spending during last year’s government funding process.

I thought he testified earlier this week that the administration expects to ask Congress for additional defense spending for the Iran war, although he said he could not give lawmakers an estimate of how much it would add to the current $1.5 trillion defense funding request.

Lawmakers questioned Kennedy on dozens of other issues across the country hearingincluding the way he has spoken about vaccines since being confirmed as HHS secretary, the rise in measles cases across the country, and comments by Kennedy and Trump about the possible causes of autism.

Utah Republican Blake Moore, after saying his 10-year-old is on the autism spectrum, said he was “disappointed” with what the administration has revealed so far about possible causes.

He also said his wife was injured claims from Trump and Kennedy that women taking Tylenol during pregnancy may augment the risk of their children later being diagnosed with autism.

“We don’t even know if she took Tylenol during her pregnancy, but it was a painful moment for her,” Blake Moore said. “I just want to encourage the administration and your team to keep doing that. I think we can do more here with low expectations.”

That’s what medical experts say decades of research show autism is the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Death by measles

California Democratic Rep. Linda T. Sánchez questioned Kennedy over comments he made during a Senate hearing on vaccine approval, arguing that he had not stuck to his principles. commitments he has made during this process.

She then asked him if the measles vaccine could have prevented the boy’s death in Texas.

“It’s certainly possible,” Kennedy said.

But he repeatedly refused to answer Sánchez’s question about whether Trump had approved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to remove an information campaign encouraging vaccinations, even though she asked him to do so several times.

Sánchez then showed a poster of a photo of Kennedy and Kid Rock to illustrate her dissatisfaction with his performance as HHS Secretary so far.

“One thing that I find unbelievable is that you suspended this pro-vaccination information campaign. But somehow you spend taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock,” she said. “And somehow you think that’s a better public health message than informing the public about the importance of vaccines.”

Day care, Medicaid, Black maternal health

Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis pressed Kennedy on whether he agreed with Trump’s statement earlier this month, when the president said: “We can’t do day care. We can’t do day care. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it at the state level. They can’t do it at the federal level. We have to make sure of one thing: military protection.”

Kennedy responded that he was “ordered to make 12% cuts across our department” because the national debt, which had accumulated over decades, had reached $39 trillion.

“Now we have to tighten our belts,” Kennedy said.

Davis also questioned Kennedy about funding and initiatives to reduce black maternal mortality, saying that “the Trump administration is undermining the health of black mothers on all sides.”

“The GOP has cut over a trillion dollars from Medicaid, which covers over 40% of births in the United States. President Trump has just proposed cutting maternal and child health care programs by over $800 million,” he said. “DOGE has defunded several research projects that could have saved countless black mothers, such as Morehouse School of Medicine’s research on improving the health of pregnant and postpartum black women.”

Kennedy responded by arguing that he and other members of the Trump administration are “doing more to improve maternal health than any other administration in history.”

“There was tremendous duplication of departments. We had 42 different maternity health services in our department,” Kennedy said. “We’ve cut some of them out and consolidated them. We’re investing huge amounts in maternal health right now.”