White House proposes $5B NIH cut

The White House wants Congress to cut the National Institutes of Health by $5 billion in fiscal year 2027, reducing the agency’s proposed budget to $41.4 billion. (nih.gov) (statnews.com) The proposal was released April 3 as part of President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, which seeks $111.1 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, down $15.8 billion, or 12.5%, from fiscal year 2026. (whitehouse.gov) (hhs.gov) (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com) The National Institutes of Health is the federal government’s main funder of biomedical research, sending money to its own labs and to universities, hospitals, and research centers across the country. The fiscal year 2027 request also calls for shrinking the agency’s structure, cutting the number of institutes and centers from 27 to 22. (nih.gov) (statnews.com) The National Institutes of Health budget office said the plan would merge the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism with the National Institute on Drug Abuse into a new National Institute of Substance Use and Addiction Research. It also said the budget would move the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and eliminate three directly appropriated institutes and centers. (nih.gov) The administration’s budget documents say the cuts fit a broader push to reduce non-defense discretionary spending and redirect health spending toward its “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The budget also proposes a $2.9 billion cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a $129 million cut to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (whitehouse.gov) (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com) The White House budget says the National Institutes of Health “broke the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.” It specifically targets the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities for elimination. (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com) Drug makers, academic medical centers, and patient groups watch these proposals closely because National Institutes of Health grants often support the early-stage lab work that later feeds clinical trials and commercial drug development. Applied Clinical Trials reported that industry groups warned the fiscal year 2027 plan could reshape where research money flows if Congress adopted it. (appliedclinicaltrialsonline.com) Congress writes the spending bills, and lawmakers rejected much deeper health cuts in earlier Trump budget requests. Chief Healthcare Executive noted that Trump proposed cutting the department by about $40 billion last year, but much of that funding was later restored. (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com) The budget request opens the next fight over federal research spending, but the final numbers will be set on Capitol Hill, not at the White House. (whitehouse.gov) (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com)