President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday unveiled a sweeping proposal to slash the Department of Health and Human Services budget by more than $31 billion in the fiscal year 2026 budget, marking a dramatic shift in federal health policy under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership, The Hill reported.
The White House is requesting $94.7 billion for HHS.
The plan outlines significant restructuring and cost-cutting measures that reflect Kennedy’s agenda to overhaul federal health programs and promote his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative.
Though not binding, the proposal signals the administration’s priorities and serves as a blueprint for lawmakers drafting future appropriations bills. “The plan prioritizes resources to efficiently achieve our goal to Make America Healthy Again,” the White House said in a statement.
At the center of the budget overhaul is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which would face a nearly 40% funding cut — dropping from almost $48.5 billion in fiscal 2025 to $27.5 billion in 2026.
The reorganization would shrink the NIH’s current 27 institutes to eight, preserving only the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging in their current form. The remaining institutes would be consolidated into five new entities, including the National Institute on Body Systems and the National Institute on Behavioral Health.
“This restructuring will create efficiencies within NIH that will allow the agency to focus on true science and coordinate research to make the best use of federal funds,” according to the HHS Budget in Brief.
However, many medical and advocacy organizations expressed concern about the scope and impact of the cuts.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network warned in a statement that returning to decades-old funding levels could significantly harm public health outcomes: “Returning to funding levels from two decades ago — and three decades ago when accounting for biomedical inflation — will set this nation back dramatically in our ability to reduce death and suffering from a disease that is expected to kill more than 618,000 Americans this year alone.”
The budget also includes steep reductions to other public health agencies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would see its funding slashed by more than half, from more than $9 billion to just above $4 billion. The Food and Drug Administration would be reduced from about $7 billion to $6.5 billion, CNN reported.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought defended the plan, stating that the administration remains committed to cancer research but believes the NIH has become too big and too political.
“It’s more about the NIH, and the NIH has been a bureaucracy that we believe has been weaponized against the American people,” Vought told CNN on Sunday.
The administration’s proposal follows a preliminary memo leaked in April and adds new detail to the administration’s broader effort to reshape the federal government’s approach to health and science.
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