“You can’t just come in and light the place on fire and say, ‘Well, it was a mess,'” Schatz said.

Collins, who is Senate chair of the Appropriations Committee, said she’s worried that cutting back on global vaccination programs will lead to more “preventable deaths, like tuberculosis and pneumonia.”

Rubio defended the moves, saying “we are continuing to do vaccinations” and that the U.S. is “not walking away from foreign aid” but wants to “target it more effectively.”

“We cannot continue to be the foreign aid provider for everyone on everything,” Rubio said. “We do not have unlimited resources.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he had a combative exchange with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about humanitarian aid.

“You used to speak with conviction about the importance of foreign aid as a tool to advance American values and interests,” Van Hollen said. “Then you stood by while Elon Musk took a chainsaw to USAID and other assistance programs.”

Also on Tuesday, Kennedy continued to defend cutbacks to the National Institutes of Health before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.

In one exchange with Collins about what priorities he would fund for research if he had a larger budget to work with, Kennedy went on a series of tangents. One example included a claim he made without evidence that male teenagers have half of the sperm counts of men in their 60s.

Kennedy, who is not a scientist or doctor and has no medical training, also said without providing any evidence that the NIH was too focused on looking at removing amyloid plaque to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The Food and Drug Administration in 2023 approved medication that removed amyloid plaque from the brain, and that drug, Leqembi, has been proven in clinical trials to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Collins has shepherded through Congress several bills that prioritize Alzheimer’s research, prevention and treatment.