The Trump administration is eyeing about $40 billion in cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services’s budget next year, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times, as the White House charges ahead with plans for drastic changes to the agencies that regulate food and drugs, protect Americans from disease and research new treatments.
The proposed cuts laid out in the preliminary budget memo would reduce the department’s budget from about $121 billion to about $80.4 billion. The document also proposes eliminating dozens of programs focused on various public health challenges, such as autism, teen pregnancy, lead poisoning, opioid recovery and support for rural hospitals. The memo was first reported by The Washington Post.
The cuts deal with discretionary H.H.S. funding, not what the federal government is obligated by law to spend annually on insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which insure nearly half of Americans.
While it is not yet clear if the Trump administration will pursue all of the cuts the document outlines, it is Congress that will decide whether to enact them, as the legislature appropriates the federal government’s funding.
Still, the memo reveals how President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, might put into practice their plans to overhaul the department and refashion it as a crucible for Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
About a quarter of the funds that would survive the proposed cuts would be directed toward the Administration for a Healthy America, a new $20 billion effort that would oversee agencies focused on H.I.V. and AIDS, maternal and child health, environmental health, mental health and primary care.
Many existing programs would be consolidated under that new umbrella, such as those dealing with domestic violence, which the memo recommends fusing “into a single grant program.” But the proposed restructuring effort would also cut several initiatives, such as programs focused on family planning, traumatic brain injuries and reducing things like infant mortality, firearms injuries and drowning.
The memo also envisions that within that new division there will be a $500 million research fund controlled by Mr. Kennedy and dedicated “for activities that support the Administration’s MAHA initiative.”
At many of the health department’s existing agencies, the proposed cuts would deliver a devastating blow. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget would be almost halved, from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion, while the National Institutes of Health would have its funding drop from its current level of almost $48 billion to $27.3 billion.
At the Food and Drug Administration, the budget would also be reduced, from $7.2 billion to $6.5 billion. The memo also proposes that routine inspections of food facilities be contracted out entirely to states, while the Trump administration would take various unspecified actions “so chemicals and other additives in food and food packaging can be expeditiously removed from our food supply.”
And the Indian Health Service, the staffing of which has already caused clashes between Mr. Kennedy and Native community leaders, would suffer an approximately $2 billion cut, leaving it with about $6 billion.
The department previously announced the elimination of 10,000 jobs, in addition to the estimated 10,000 jobs cut through retirements and buyouts in the early weeks of the Trump administration. Spending on personnel at the federal health agencies accounts for a small fraction of its budget — less than 1 percent, experts said.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Apoorva Mandavilli reports on science and global health, with a focus on infectious diseases, pandemics and the public health agencies that try to manage them.
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