Washington D.C. – It is immediately clear why Donald Trump quietly posted his FY2027 budget blueprint in a deep, dark corner of the White House website on Friday of Easter weekend: the act of a coward who does not want the public to know about the warped priorities within that seek to set public health back decades to pay for a deeply unpopular Iran war and maintain $1 trillion in wasteful tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. It’s a budget that fully reflects Trump’s chilling value statement this week: “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. […] We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project: “Donald Trump’s budget plan is a roadmap to smashing virtually every public health safeguard and inviting deadly preventable diseases like measles to run wild. It’s far too heavy a price to pay for endless war overseas and tax breaks for Trump’s billionaire friends and corporate donors – and the economy will get sicker right along with millions of Americans. Trump’s proposed cuts to the NIH alone will end up costing working people more than double that in lost economic activity, while the potential cost to our public health in lost scientific research and innovation is off the charts. With countless examples to choose from, ‘America first’ may be the biggest lie Donald Trump ever told.”
Proposed Wrong Priority Increases:
- Staggering Nearly Half A Trillion Increase (44%) in Department of Defense Spending
- $10 Billion Increase for ICE
Proposed Harmful Cuts:
- Overall $15.4 Billion Cut (12.2% Cut to Discretionary Funding) to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, including:
- $5 Billion Cut (~10%) to the National Institutes of Health, jeopardizing thousands of research grants aimed at finding treatments and cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious diseases and many other illnesses; NIH grants for medical research have been credited with delivering a more than 2.5-to-1 return on taxpayer investment, generating $94.58 billion in new economic activity in FY2024.
- Eliminates the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities within NIH
- Eliminates the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities within NIH
- $5 Billion in Cuts to Programs under Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH)
- $356 Million Cut (~10%) to HHS ASPR (responsible for pandemic preparedness, national stockpile, hospital preparedness program)
- $129 Million Cut (37%) to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- $5 Billion Cut (~10%) to the National Institutes of Health, jeopardizing thousands of research grants aimed at finding treatments and cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious diseases and many other illnesses; NIH grants for medical research have been credited with delivering a more than 2.5-to-1 return on taxpayer investment, generating $94.58 billion in new economic activity in FY2024.
- 52% Cut to the Environmental Protection Agency
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