Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, April 9, 2026
FY 2027 Budget Request Released by White House

On April 3, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released initial factsheets outlining its priority areas of funding for the fiscal year (FY) 2027 federal budget. The FY 2027 topline fact sheets focused on reducing nondefense spending by $73 billion or 10 percent while boosting our nation’s military with a $1.5 trillion overall topline for the defense budget, a 42 percent increase from the 2026 total resource level. There is also a request for $350 billion in additional resources through reconciliation. The budget also calls for an investment of $30 million to support a newly established National Fraud Division, combatting drug abuse and a refocusing of activities to support mental health, and supporting artificial intelligence and quantum research to keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of these critical technologies.

For the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the budget requests $41 billion or a nearly $6 billion or 12 percent cut in FY 2027 for NIH’s research and proposes reforms to the agency with the elimination of the following Institutes and Centers (ICs) -the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, Fogarty Center, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Other ICs that the administration deems wasteful include the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Library of Medicine. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is relocated into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are consolidated into the National Institute of Substance Use and Addiction Research. The accounts for the remaining ICs will continue to be appropriated separately. Funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) is requested at $4 billion, or a 54.7 percent cut from FY 2026.

The budget expands 2026 work in Energy-Water Security, a joint Department of Energy (DOE)-NSF effort with $75 million at the DOE and a companion $100 million at NSF.  This initiative would ensure solutions are tailored to drought-prone basins and energy-intensive regions, strengthening America’s energy dominance and supporting the President’s goals of securing water resources, modernizing infrastructure, and ensuring resilient energy systems that underpin national prosperity.

The Office of Science at the Department of Energy is funded at $7.14 billion which would be an approximate cut of $1.2 billion or 15 percent cut from FY 2026 of $8.4 billion, which includes unobligated balances from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the elimination of climate change and green project research while focusing on high performance computing, AI, quantum, fusion and critical mineral research. Additionally, the budget would, according to the documentation, stop wasting Biological and Environmental Research resources on climate change and focus funding on advancing biotechnology and AI-enabled earth-energy system modeling to support the Energy Dominance agenda. There is also reduced funding for the over budget international fusion experiment called ITER, and a redirection of those savings to domestic fusion technologies that demonstrate performance. The DOE Office of Science budget also provides no funding to Minority Serving Institutions for the Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce initiative, which the administration describes as a discriminatory DEI program to “diversify American leadership in the physical sciences, including energy and climate.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would see a nine percent or $11.5 billion increase from the FY 2026 enacted level and invest in world class healthcare, improve the delivery of benefits, prioritize mental health services and suicide prevention, and bolster other benefits to enhance the prosperity of veterans. The administration wants to see major construction projects executed with new replacement medical centers in Indianapolis, Indiana, and land purchased for a new medical center in San Antonio, Texas, in addition to upgrades to VA information technology systems with a plus up of $389 million. The VA Medical and Prosthetic Research program would be funded at $922 million, or a 2.4 percent cut compared to FY 2026.

The Department of Agriculture was called “bloated” by the budget, so a 19 percent or $4.9 billion cut from FY 2026 was included to bring the agency closer to the rural Americans it serves rather than focus on non-core mission areas. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture Formula Grants would be cut by $510 million which the administration says are pre-determined earmarks for university pet projects, and instead the United States Department of Agriculture’s research will be focused on competitively awarded projects in the national interest. For example, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) would be funded at $419 million or a 3.7 percent cut compared to FY 2026. AFRI is the nation’s premier competitive, peer-reviewed research program for fundamental and applied sciences in agriculture. It is broad in scope, with programs ranging from fundamental science to farm management and community issues. Investments made through AFRI occur in the three major complementary components: 1) Strengthening Agricultural Systems, 2) Foundational and Applied Science, and 3) Education and Workforce Development. Innovations in U.S. agriculture are needed to promote agriculture production that enhances nutrition research, opportunities for economic growth, and both formal and non-formal agricultural education. NIFA will continue to support USDA’s agriculture research enhancement awards program, projects addressing plant and animal health, emerging pest and disease issues, food safety, plant and animal breeding, improved productivity, precision agriculture, biosecurity, and workforce development.