The $8 Billion Children’s Vaccine Fund Kennedy Would Oversee

When President Bill Clinton worked with a bipartisan Congress to enact a federal program to guarantee vaccines for poor children, they agreed that the authority over buying shots from drug makers should rest with the health secretary. The bill’s drafters did not consider that an extremely vocal critic of childhood vaccines would emerge as a nominee for the role.

That critic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., comes before the Senate for confirmation hearings this week. If confirmed, he would have the power to limit or even cut off contracts with the makers of vaccines for more than half the nation’s children under the $8 billion dollar Vaccines for Children program.

The program has been credited with raising national vaccination rates and protects nearly 38 million low-income and working-class children from diseases like polio, measles, whooping cough and chickenpox.

Mr. Kennedy has said he would not take vaccines away from anyone, but he has a long history of questioning vaccine safety. The far-reaching authority he would wield over vaccine policy has become increasingly worrisome for public health experts, researchers and lawmakers from both parties.

Some architects of the program are trying to persuade senators to oppose his nomination.

“I think he’s dangerous to children’s health,” Donna E. Shalala, Mr. Clinton’s health secretary and a former Democratic congresswoman, said in an interview. She said she had spoken to Republican senators who expressed uneasiness about Mr. Kennedy, but would not name them.

Confirmation hearings for Mr. Kennedy will begin on Wednesday before the Senate Finance Committee, and continue on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The back-to-back sessions will give senators of both parties an opportunity to ask Mr. Kennedy pointed questions about how he would oversee the nation’s large health agencies and vaccine policies.