The White House on Friday revealed President Trump’s budget request for fiscal 2026, which includes cutting a quarter of the discretionary funding designated to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In a letter addressed to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought listed out the major discretionary funding changes requested by the Trump administration.
The 2026 proposal is seeking to cut $33.3 billion in discretionary funding for HHS, representing a 26.2 percent reduction compared to the fiscal 2025 budget.
This includes a $3.6 billion reduction in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an $18 billion reduction for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a $674 million reduction for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Program Management and a $240 million reduction for Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Hospital Preparedness Program.
The only health program that gains discretionary funding in the proposal is HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, for which the budget provides $500 million.
The budget claims these funds would “allow the Secretary to tackle nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety across HHS.”
In his letter, Vought wrote that the recommended funding levels “result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”
The reasons cited by the Trump administration for the numerous proposed budget cuts include arguments that the CDC has “duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs,” citing the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion and National Center for Environmental Health as examples.
At NIH, the recommended cuts include eliminating funding for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, “which is replete with [diversity, equity and inclusion] expenditures” per Vought’s letter, as well as fund for National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
Medicaid, currently the center of a headache for the House GOP as it seeks to find cuts in the budget, will suffer “no impacts” in its ability to provide benefits despite the quarter of a billion-dollar reduction in discretionary funding being asked for, the proposal claimed.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps households pay for heating and cooling costs, was deemed unnecessary by the Trump administration which argued states already have policies in place preventing utilities from being disconnected in low-income households.
Collins signaled Friday she was not impressed by Trump’s proposal.
“The President’s Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process. This request has come to Congress late, and key details still remain outstanding,” the Maine Republican said in a statement.
“Based on my initial review, however, I have serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face and to the proposed funding cuts to – and in some cases elimination of – programs like LIHEAP, TRIO, and those that support biomedical research. Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,” she added.
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