President Unveils $1.7T Budget Proposal, Seeks to Slash $164B in Fed Spending

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday released a $1.7 trillion partial spending plan for the next fiscal year that includes $163 billion in cuts to climate, renewable energy, education and health and housing programs.

While it remains to be seen to what extent Congress will embrace the proposal — there’s usually a vast difference between what a president requests and what he gets — at least one key player in that determination, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., quickly endorsed it, calling it “a bold blueprint that reflects the values of hard-working Americans.”

“Our country cannot continue to bear the hard consequences of years of runaway spending under Democratic leadership, and this budget makes clear that fiscal discipline is non-negotiable,” Johnson said in a statement disseminated through social media. 

“President Trump’s plan ensures every federal taxpayer dollar spent is used to serve the American people, not a bloated bureaucracy or partisan pet projects,” he said.

The speaker went on to say that “House Republicans stand ready to work alongside President Trump to implement a responsible budget that puts America first. 

“This proposal promises the American people that their government is finally listening, leading with common sense, and restoring the principles of good governance,” he added.

House Democrats, as would be expected, held an entirely different view, with Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, calling it “Trump’s roadmap to destruction.”

“Instead of tackling the cost-of-living crisis, President Trump’s 2026 budget request will make it worse,” DeLauro said in a written statement. 

“He promised to fight for the working class but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government,” she continued. “They are attacking education, housing, cancer research, and investments in the middle class to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. 

“We need the government to fight for the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. The government envisioned by President Trump and Elon Musk only serves billionaires and the biggest corporations,” DeLauro said, adding, “This is not a budget. It is an all-out assault on our nation’s families, small businesses, and communities in every part of the country.”

Health Agencies Take a Big Hit

In many respects, the budget proposal released through the White House Office of Management and Budget continues the massive reorganization and peeling back of the federal government that’s been ongoing since the president assumed office in January.

While the proposal includes $500 million for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, it also calls for sweeping cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the program management side of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In the case of the CDC, the administration says its proposal to cut the agency’s budget by more than half — down from about $9 billion to just $4 billion — reflects an effort to refocus its mission “on core activities such as emerging and infectious disease surveillance, outbreak investigations, and maintaining the nation’s public health infrastructure.”

To streamline programs and eliminate waste, the budget proposal calls for merging multiple programs into one, and giving states flexibility to address local needs.

“Specifically, the budget proposes consolidating funding for infectious disease and opioids, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis programs into one grant program funded at $300 million,” the proposal said.

“The budget eliminates duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary programs, including: the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion; National Center for Environmental Health; National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; the Global Health Center; [and] Public Health Preparedness and Response, which can be conducted more effectively by states,” it says.

The budget proposal, which at times uses highly charged language to explain its cuts, goes on to accuse the NIH of breaking the trust of the American people with “wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

The budget document goes on to take the NIH to task for its “inability to prove that its grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology were not complicit in such a possible leak” that lead to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It asserts the NIH’s alleged failures to “get data and hold [grant] recipients of federal funding accountable” is evidence it has “grown too big and unfocused.”

As another example of how it says the agency has undermined public confidence, the administration’s budget proposal accuses the NIH of promoting “radical gender ideology to the detriment of America’s youth.”

It points specifically to an NIH-funded study titled “Psychosocial Functioning in Transgender Youth after 2 Years of Hormones,” in which two participants committed suicide. 

While the budget maintains $27 billion to fund NIH research, it directs those funds to programs “in line with the president’s commitment to MAHA.”

At the same time, it slashes $534 million from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which it says is “replete with DEI expenditures,” $198 million from the National Institute of Nursing Research, $170 million from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, and $95 million from the Fogarty International Center, which supports global health research.

Henceforth, the proposal says, NIH research will “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.”

All told, cuts to the agency’s budget compared to the current fiscal year amount to about $17.9 billion.

Also taking a major whack is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

While the administration says it is committed to combating the “scourge of deadly drugs,” it says the agency, which stands to lose $1 billion under the budget proposal, has used its grant-making ability to fund “dangerous activities billed as ‘harm reduction,’” including funding “safe smoking kits and supplies” and “syringes” for drug users. 

According to the OMB, the budget proposal once again will “refocus” SAMHSA on its core mission while eliminating waste and spending on programs that are “too small to have a national impact.”

As for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the administration is proposing cutting about $674 million from its budget, promising the reduction “will have no impact on providing benefits to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.” 

“The budget eliminates funding that had been used to carry out non-statutory, wasteful, and woke activities while maintaining funding for core Medicare and Medicaid operations, such as ending unnecessary DEI and support contracts. It eliminates health equity-focused activities and Inflation Reduction Act-related outreach and education activities,” the proposal says.

Good Bye ‘Green New Scam,’ Administration Says

The administration is proposing to cut the Department of Energy’s annual budget by $4.7 billion, mostly by slashing funding for programs related to renewable energy and climate change.

Perhaps most eye-opening of all, however, is that the White House wants to cancel about $15 billion in renewable energy and climate funding that the department was allocated through one of the Biden administration’s signature pieces of legislation, the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

That funding, the budget proposal says, was “committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers.”

The administration is also calling for an end to “taxpayer handouts to electric vehicle and battery makers” and it plans to cancel the Carbon Dioxide Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, “a Biden administration program of so little interest that not a single dollar has been awarded to date.”

The budget proposal also wipes out about $2.5 billion in funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, eliminating its funding for climate change-related activities and Biden-era initiatives like Justice40, which aimed to ensure that at least 40% of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy projects go to disadvantaged communities.

“This proposal would support technologies that promote firm baseload power and other priorities established in relevant executive orders, such as bioenergy,” the OMB said.

The budget proposal would also cut about $260 million from ARPA-E, a program that funds research and development of advanced energy technologies.

In doing so, the OMB points to a number of past ARPA-E investments that it considers highly dubious, like $4 million allocated to research into a “wearable thermal regulatory” system to regulate body temperatures and reduce use of air conditioning units and heaters, and $55 million invested in “Plants Engineered to Replace Oil,” a program intended to eliminate the use of food crops in the production of transportation fuels.

“The budget reduces funding for ARPA-E to a fiscally responsible level for high risk, high reward research advancing reliable energy technologies and other critical and emerging technologies,” the administration says.

The budget proposal would shutter the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, based on the administration’s contention that many states already have policies in place preventing utility disconnection for low-income households.

“The budget proposes to end this program and to instead support low-income individuals through energy dominance, lower prices, and an America First economic platform,” the proposal says.

Toward that end, the budget calls for the restoration of the “name and function” of the Office of Fossil Energy, so that it can “fund research of technologies that could produce an abundance of domestic fossil energy and critical minerals.”

Other Major Changes 

The White House is looking to cut about $12 billion in spending on education, with much of the “savings” coming from streamlining Title I money for high-poverty schools and other K-12 programs.

At the same time, the budget proposal calls for investing $500 million — a $60 million increase — to expand access to charter schools.

“Federal control has replaced local decision-making, creating a one-size-fits-all system that is decimating student achievement,” the proposal says, quoting the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found 70% of 8th graders are below proficient in reading, and 72% are below proficient in math. 

“This centralized approach has weakened states’ ability to deliver quality education and eroded parents’ direction of their children’s education,” the proposal says, adding, “charter schools … have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”

At the same time, the president’s budget proposes dramatic increases for defense and border security.

On the defense side, the administration is proposing an increase in spending of 13% to $1.01 trillion for FY 2026.

As for Homeland Security, the White House is calling for $175 billion — a $43.8 billion increase — to “fully secure our border.”

The money would be used to advance the administration’s ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration and mass deportations, finishing construction of Trump’s wall at the southern border and investing in technology to police that border. 

Meanwhile, the proposal would cut about $650 million for the Biden-era Shelter and Services Program, which the Trump White House says wrongly enabled cities, churches and advocacy groups to provide aid, comfort and temporary shelter to illegal immigrants.

The administration says a portion of the Homeland Security increases — at least $325 billion — would be provided through the budget reconciliation process currently underway in Congress.

“Providing these resources through reconciliation ensures that the money is available when needed, and not held hostage by Democrats to force wasteful non-defense discretionary spending increases as was the case in the president’s first term,” the proposal says.

Another major cut is earmarked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which could lose about $500 million in funding this year.

While this might seem contrary to some of the administration’s goals, the White House maintains the cuts are the cornerstone of an effort to “undo” the “weaponization” of the agency that occurred during the Biden administration.

The president’s proposal also calls for slashing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget by about 24%, reducing it from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion, and focusing the agency squarely on getting astronauts back to the moon and onto Mars for the first time.

Among the NASA programs facing the axe are those related to climate-monitoring satellites and Gateway, a small space station that was to be put in orbit around the moon.

Another program likely to lose its funding under the plan is research into how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from private and commercial aircraft.

“The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche nongovernmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life,” wrote Russell Vought, director of Office of Management in Budget, in a letter accompanying the proposed budget.

“We also considered, for each program, whether the governmental service provided could be provided better by state or local governments (if provided at all),” he continued. “Just as the federal government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people, who understand and respect the needs and desires of their communities far better than the federal government ever could.”

All told, the president’s budget plan would cut non-defense discretionary funding by about 22.6% below current year spending.

“Over 10 years, this restraint would generate trillions in savings, necessary for balancing the budget,” Vought said.

Among those on Capitol Hill who joined Johnson in his support of the proposal was Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

“This budget realigns federal spending to the priorities of the people: a secure nation, making America healthy again, a Justice Department combating crime and not weaponized against the people, and common sense,” Roy said.

But Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., joined DeLauro in her condemnation of the plan.

“Trump’s budget proposal is a blueprint for disaster,” Pallone said in a post on the X social media platform.

“Trump doesn’t believe in government, and this budget continues his relentless assault on the federal agencies whose mission it is to protect the health and well-being of the American people,” he said.

“There’s no doubt Trump is going to continue to illegally dismantle federal agencies so he can consolidate power in the White House. It’s time for Republicans to grow a spine and join us in opposing these dangerous actions,” Pallone said.

But not all the reactions on Capitol Hill on Friday broke down along party lines.

Significantly, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she has “serious objections” to a number of the proposals included in Trump’s budget request.

Though Collins acknowledged the proposal is “simply one step in the annual budget process,” she went on to say she has “serious objections” about the defense spending plan and a number of the cuts the administration has proposed.

“Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,” she said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue