Trump Administration Plots Massive Budget Cuts That 'Would Destroy Public Health'
"Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires."
People demonstrate outside the main campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 1, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia.
(Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Apr 21, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
The Trump administration is preparing a budget proposal that experts say would utterly devastate public health across the United States by eliminating life-saving initiatives and hampering key medical research, with massive cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Under the administration's proposal, which has not been finalized and must ultimately be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, the CDC and NIH would each see their budgets cut by 40%. Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would see its budget cut from $121 billion to roughly $80 billion under the Trump plan.
Ellie Murray, an independent epidemiologist, warned on social media that "a cut that big would destroy public health."
The administration is also pushing to consolidate departments and programs under the newly announced Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), an initiative spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is overseeing large-scale firings at his agency that critics say endanger the well-being of children and families across the U.S.
CNNnoted that as part of a sweeping attack on public health agencies, the proposal "eliminates CDC's global health center and programs focused on chronic disease prevention, and domestic HIV/AIDS prevention."
"While some of the agency's work would be moved into new AHA centers, programs on gun violence, injury prevention, youth violence prevention, drowning, minority health, and others would be eliminated entirely," CNN continued. "The proposal would also eliminate a number of rural health programs at HHS, including grants and residency programs for rural hospitals and state offices."
Thomas Farley, a pediatrician and public health researcher, called the proposal "a bloodbath" and highlighted what he called "stunning examples" of the kinds of initiatives in the administration's crosshairs, including the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and "newborn screening programs for genetic diseases and hearing loss."
"Call your representative and send a copy of this proposed act of abject cruelty to them," Farley urged.
Members of the Democratic caucus in Congress immediately vowed to fight the proposed budget cuts, which come as the administration is gutting health agency staff and working with Republicans to slash Medicaid.
"President Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, warning that the administration's budget blueprint would condemn "Americans to preventable disease and death."
"If this dangerous budget was ever enacted, communities across the United States would suffer," said DeLauro. "The Trump administration is aiming to further eviscerate the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration—agencies that boost public health, protect Americans from infectious diseases, lead the world in biomedical research, and help keep our food and drugs safe. President Trump and RFK Jr. want to eliminate programs focused on chronic disease, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services that save lives."
Trump and his allies, including world's richest man Elon Musk, have cast their push for large-scale funding cuts across the federal government as a necessary bid to eliminate waste and abuse.
But as the president targets programs such as Head Start—which cost the federal government roughly $12 billion in fiscal year 2024—he is pursuing a record $1 trillion for the U.S. military, a hotbed of waste and fraud.
"Your budget proposal is morally obscene," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a message to the White House late last week. "It must be defeated."
"Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires."
People demonstrate outside the main campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 1, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia.
(Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Apr 21, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
The Trump administration is preparing a budget proposal that experts say would utterly devastate public health across the United States by eliminating life-saving initiatives and hampering key medical research, with massive cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Under the administration's proposal, which has not been finalized and must ultimately be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress, the CDC and NIH would each see their budgets cut by 40%. Overall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would see its budget cut from $121 billion to roughly $80 billion under the Trump plan.
Ellie Murray, an independent epidemiologist, warned on social media that "a cut that big would destroy public health."
The administration is also pushing to consolidate departments and programs under the newly announced Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), an initiative spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is overseeing large-scale firings at his agency that critics say endanger the well-being of children and families across the U.S.
CNNnoted that as part of a sweeping attack on public health agencies, the proposal "eliminates CDC's global health center and programs focused on chronic disease prevention, and domestic HIV/AIDS prevention."
"While some of the agency's work would be moved into new AHA centers, programs on gun violence, injury prevention, youth violence prevention, drowning, minority health, and others would be eliminated entirely," CNN continued. "The proposal would also eliminate a number of rural health programs at HHS, including grants and residency programs for rural hospitals and state offices."
Thomas Farley, a pediatrician and public health researcher, called the proposal "a bloodbath" and highlighted what he called "stunning examples" of the kinds of initiatives in the administration's crosshairs, including the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and "newborn screening programs for genetic diseases and hearing loss."
"Call your representative and send a copy of this proposed act of abject cruelty to them," Farley urged.
Members of the Democratic caucus in Congress immediately vowed to fight the proposed budget cuts, which come as the administration is gutting health agency staff and working with Republicans to slash Medicaid.
"President Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead he, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are attacking the programs and services that keep middle class, working class, and vulnerable families safe and healthy in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, warning that the administration's budget blueprint would condemn "Americans to preventable disease and death."
"If this dangerous budget was ever enacted, communities across the United States would suffer," said DeLauro. "The Trump administration is aiming to further eviscerate the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration—agencies that boost public health, protect Americans from infectious diseases, lead the world in biomedical research, and help keep our food and drugs safe. President Trump and RFK Jr. want to eliminate programs focused on chronic disease, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services that save lives."
Trump and his allies, including world's richest man Elon Musk, have cast their push for large-scale funding cuts across the federal government as a necessary bid to eliminate waste and abuse.
But as the president targets programs such as Head Start—which cost the federal government roughly $12 billion in fiscal year 2024—he is pursuing a record $1 trillion for the U.S. military, a hotbed of waste and fraud.
"Your budget proposal is morally obscene," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a message to the White House late last week. "It must be defeated."
Alex Henderson,
AlterNet
April 20, 2025
When Democrats recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms and enjoyed a net gain of 41 seats, President Donald Trump's unpopular efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, were cited as a major factor. Obamacare, many Democratic strategists argued, had become a toxic issue for Republicans.
But during his 2024 campaign, Trump once again called for the ACA to be repealed.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 19, journalist Jonathan Cohn warns that millions of Americans could lose their health insurance if Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) succeed in undermining Obamacare and Medicaid.
"The likelihood of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress taking Medicaid away from millions of low-income Americans — and, in the process, rolling back a huge piece of the Affordable Care Act — has increased significantly in the last two weeks," Cohn explains. "The change has been easy to miss, because so many other stories are dominating the news — and because the main evidence is a subtle shift in Republican rhetoric. But that shift has been crystal clear if you follow the ins and outs of health care policy — and if you were listening closely to House Speaker Mike Johnson a week ago, when he appeared on Fox News."
On Fox News, Johnson said, "We have to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. We have to eliminate people on, for example, on Medicaid who are not actually eligible to be there — able-bodied workers, for example, young men who are — who should never be on the program at all."
Johnson's remarks, Cohn notes, "may sound like a defense of Medicaid" but included "the language Medicaid critics have been using to describe a big, controversial downsizing of the program."
"Here, it helps to remember what the Affordable Care Act sought to accomplish, and the key role Medicaid played in that," Cohn writes. "The law's main goal was to make decent health insurance available to all Americans, as part of a decades-long, still unfinished campaign to make health care a basic right, as it is in every other economically advanced nation. That meant getting coverage to the uninsured, including low-income Americans who didn't have a way to get insurance on their own because their jobs didn't offer coverage or made coverage available at premiums they couldn't afford, and because individual policies — the kind you buy on your own, not through a job — were either too expensive or unavailable to them because of pre-existing conditions."
Jonathan Cohn's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
April 20, 2025
When Democrats recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms and enjoyed a net gain of 41 seats, President Donald Trump's unpopular efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, were cited as a major factor. Obamacare, many Democratic strategists argued, had become a toxic issue for Republicans.
But during his 2024 campaign, Trump once again called for the ACA to be repealed.
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 19, journalist Jonathan Cohn warns that millions of Americans could lose their health insurance if Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) succeed in undermining Obamacare and Medicaid.
"The likelihood of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress taking Medicaid away from millions of low-income Americans — and, in the process, rolling back a huge piece of the Affordable Care Act — has increased significantly in the last two weeks," Cohn explains. "The change has been easy to miss, because so many other stories are dominating the news — and because the main evidence is a subtle shift in Republican rhetoric. But that shift has been crystal clear if you follow the ins and outs of health care policy — and if you were listening closely to House Speaker Mike Johnson a week ago, when he appeared on Fox News."
On Fox News, Johnson said, "We have to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. We have to eliminate people on, for example, on Medicaid who are not actually eligible to be there — able-bodied workers, for example, young men who are — who should never be on the program at all."
Johnson's remarks, Cohn notes, "may sound like a defense of Medicaid" but included "the language Medicaid critics have been using to describe a big, controversial downsizing of the program."
"Here, it helps to remember what the Affordable Care Act sought to accomplish, and the key role Medicaid played in that," Cohn writes. "The law's main goal was to make decent health insurance available to all Americans, as part of a decades-long, still unfinished campaign to make health care a basic right, as it is in every other economically advanced nation. That meant getting coverage to the uninsured, including low-income Americans who didn't have a way to get insurance on their own because their jobs didn't offer coverage or made coverage available at premiums they couldn't afford, and because individual policies — the kind you buy on your own, not through a job — were either too expensive or unavailable to them because of pre-existing conditions."
Jonathan Cohn's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
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