{"id":21432,"date":"2026-04-16T18:01:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-wants-less-spending-rfk-jr-s-not-happy-about-it\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T18:01:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:01:51","slug":"trump-wants-less-spending-rfk-jr-s-not-happy-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-wants-less-spending-rfk-jr-s-not-happy-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump wants less spending. RFK Jr.\u2019s \u2018not happy\u2019 about it."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sounded less enthusiastic about cutting his department\u2019s budget during the first of several hearings Thursday than he did a year ago.<\/p>\n

Then, Kennedy told lawmakers a proposed 25 percent cut to the Department of Health and Human Services was needed to rein in a bloated bureaucracy plagued with reckless spending, telling House appropriators a year ago: \u201cWe intend to do more, a lot more with less.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress rejected the cuts and increased the HHS budget in a February spending bill<\/a>. In front of the Ways and Means Committee on Thursday, Kennedy struck a different tone about President Donald Trump\u2019s latest budget plan<\/a>, saying administration officials had reluctantly proposed a 12 percent cut to cope with the federal debt.<\/p>\n

He said that $2 billion in cuts to substance use and mental health grants his department issued and quickly reversed<\/a> earlier this year, before the White House released its fiscal 2027 budget plan, had been a \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he said he\u2019d sought again, as he did last year, to protect funding for the government\u2019s nutrition and education program for low-income toddlers, Head Start. \u201cIt\u2019s getting no cuts,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

Kennedy did note several times that certain departments and functions at HHS are duplicative but said efforts to consolidate functions should not be seen as cost-cutting. \u201cThere was tremendous duplication of departments, we have 42 different maternal services in our department,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Addressing cuts proposed to a government nutrition assistance program for low-income people \u2014 the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children \u2014 which falls under the Agriculture Department, Kennedy told Rep. Gwen Moore<\/a> (D-Wis.), he was \u201cnot happy about the cuts\u201d and that he wasn\u2019t the only administration official to feel that way.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s proposal calls for a $1.4 billion cut to the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to make the cuts,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cRuss Vought doesn’t want to make the cuts, President Trump doesn\u2019t, but there\u2019s a $39 trillion debt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sounded less enthusiastic about cutting his department\u2019s budget during the first of several hearings Thursday than he did a year ago. Then, Kennedy told lawmakers a proposed 25 percent cut to the Department of Health and Human Services was needed to rein in a bloated bureaucracy plagued with reckless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}