Rep. Lauren Underwood Delivers Remarks at the Full Committee Markup of the Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Funding Bill

WASHINGTON — Today, Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (IL-14) delivered the following remarks at the House Appropriations Committee markup of the fiscal year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations funding bill: 

“I rise in strong opposition to the Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill that we are considering today.  

This bill cuts a broad range of proven programs that train doctors and nurses, expand access to high-quality care, develop groundbreaking treatments and tools, prevent the spread of disease, address the overdose crisis, and keep our constituents healthy and safe.  

And that’s just in HHS. Outside that agency, this bill also guts education job training, defunds worker protection and labor law enforcement, eliminates critical programs that support women in the workforce, and continues the Republican assault on reproductive rights.  

The Republican majority claims these cuts are necessary for “fiscal responsibility,” yet they managed to find $100 MILLION for a new slush fund to, allegedly, “Make America Healthy Again.”  

Mr. Chairman, if we actually want to make America healthy, why would we defund programs the data show are working? And why would we hand over OUR power of the purse to some slush fund run by the wildly unqualified HHS Secretary?  

This committee should be demanding Mr. Kennedy’s resignation, not bankrolling his reign of terror.   

Instead of solving our maternal health crisis, or fulfilling Donald Trump’s broken promise of IVF for all, Mr. Kennedy’s primary goal seems to be taking American health care backwards.  

He spews dangerous falsehoods about vaccines, damaging public trust in one of the most safe and effective public health tools in history.   

He is playing a leading role in the deadly resurgence of preventable diseases that have already killed children on his watch. 

In fact, while Mr. Kennedy’s policies hurt us all, kids are even more at risk: he’s cut CDC’s lead poisoning team, their drowning prevention team, experts who study gun violence in schools, and so much more.   

He is using taxpayer funding to promote junk science and allow fraudsters to profit off the flaws in our health care system instead of fixing them.   

He’s hiding information: under his direction, the CDC has suppressed expert reports that did not align with Mr. Kennedy’s ideology, including a report finding—unsurprisingly—that measles risk is high near areas with low vaccination rates. 

He has stripped much-needed resources away from state and local public heath authorities and presided over the largest cut to health care in our nation’s history in the Big Ugly Bill.  

His anti-science, conspiratorial rhetoric has even fueled violent extremism that endangers his own employees, as we saw in last month’s terrifying shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta.  

One of the CDC experts who recently resigned in protest of Mr. Kennedy’s dangerous policies—who served as Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases—wrote in his resignation letter that Mr. Kennedy’s “desire to please a political base will result in death and disability for vulnerable children and adults.” 

As a public health nurse myself, I know this warning is true. Mr. Kennedy is unfit to serve. His leadership has been a disgrace and he needs to resign.   

But unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s attacks on science don’t end with Mr. Kennedy.   

The President’s Budget Request for FY26 also took a hatchet to the National Institutes of Health, proposing to consolidate the 27 institutes and centers that make up the NIH into just 8.  

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which supports some of the most promising work to end America’s maternal health crisis, is just one of the many institutes that would be undermined by this misguided reorganization.  

The President’s plan would also completely eliminate the National Institutes for Nursing Research and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, firing the scientists and other staff who have dedicated their lives to ensuring every single American gets the care they deserve.  

I am grateful that this committee has rejected this proposed reorganization of NIH, but unfortunately the bill does include a funding cut that will delay and derail the cutting-edge work being done by our nation’s top medical researchers.  

If we want to make Americans healthy, this bill makes no sense. I cannot support it, and I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.” 

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