Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, May 8, 2025
President Trump Reveals His Skinny Budget for FY 2026 

On May 2, the first signs of what will be in the full President’s budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026 were revealed, acknowledging the fact that scientific research at federal agencies would be curtailed if it was approved by Congress. The pared down skinny budget holds the line on total spending while providing an unprecedented 13 percent increase for defense and border security. Funding for nondefense agencies and programs is reduced by $163 billion or 22.6 percent. This outline lacks details by program, project, and activity but provides high level figures for agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE SC). NIH was reduced to a $27 billion proposed budget from its $47 billion enacted figure for FY 2025, or a 42 percent cut. 

According to the section of the skinny budget regarding NIH, “The Administration is committed to restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH. NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.  While evidence of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic leaking from a laboratory is now confirmed by several intelligence agencies, the NIH’s inability to prove that its grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology were not complicit in such a possible leak or get data and hold recipients of Federal funding accountable is evidence that NIH has grown too big and unfocused. Further, the NIH has been involved in dangerous gain-of-function research and failed to adequately address it, which further undermines public confidence in NIH. The NIH has also promoted radical gender ideology to the detriment of America’s youth. For example, the NIH funded a study titled “Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones,” in which two participants tragically committed suicide. The Budget proposes to reform NIH and focus NIH research activities in line with the President’s commitment to MAHA, including consolidating multiple overlapping and ill-focused programs into five new focus areas with associated spending reforms: the National Institute on Body Systems Research; National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Disability Related Research; and National Institute on Behavioral Health. The Budget also eliminates funding for the National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities (-$534 million), which is replete with DEI expenditures, the Fogarty International Center (-$95 million), the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (-$170 million), and the National Institute of Nursing Research (-$198 million). NIH research would align with the President’s priorities to address chronic disease and other epidemics, implementing all executive orders, and eliminating research on climate change, radical gender ideology, and divisive racialism. This new structure retains the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The Budget maintains $27 billion for NIH research.”

NSF’s budget was cut by $5.53 billion from its current $9.06 billion budget, or a 60 percent cut. The reductions at NSF included $3.5 billion from the General Research and Education account, $1.1 billion from Broadening Participation, and $93 million to Agency Operations and Awards Management. In addition, the administration’s budget highlights the elimination of all DEI-related programs at NSF and cuts to NSF funding for climate, clean energy, woke social behavioral and economic sciences, and programs in low priority areas of science. 

DOE SC was cut by $1.2 billion, a 15 percent reduction from its $8.24 billion enacted level. For DOE SC, the administration cites reductions in funding, “…for climate change and Green New Scam research. The Budget maintains U.S. competitiveness in priority areas such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, quantum information science, fusion, and critical minerals.”

Despite these proposed cuts, the chances of Congress accepting and passing the administration’s budget are unlikely as hearings take place with administration witnesses and the Appropriations Committee’s mark-up the twelve spending bills for FY 2026. House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole recently said regarding the White House’s seemingly inattentive approach to its relations with congressional funders, that President Donald Trump is not the “commander” of Congress after Office of Management Director Russ Vought cancelled a planned meeting with the House GOP funding leaders before the skinny budget had been released. After the release, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins issued a statement stating, “The President’s Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process. This request has come to Congress late, and key details remain outstanding. 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.”

On May 14, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the FY 2026 Department of Health and Human Services budget. This is a highly anticipated event to hear from the new Secretary of Health and Human Services about the priorities in the president’s budget, such as the Make America Healthy Again Commission to tackle improved health using methods less reliant on medication and treatments, and changes to the structure of NIH’s institutes and centers.