July 31, 2025
Senate appropriators have advanced a FFY26 (funding) proposal that rejects efforts by the White House to severely cut the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and to impose cuts and collapse SAMHSA into a new entity that would include the CDC, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and other federal agencies.
Most of the increase ($400M) would go to the NIH however, the legislation appropriates $7.4 billion for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said before the vote that the bill “rejects Trump’s cuts that would have devastated our workforce to fight substance use disorders, HIV and pandemics.”
Senate Appropriators Pass $116.6B HHS Funding Bill
The legislation increases health funding, rebuking the Trump administration’s request for billions in spending cuts.
By Carmen Paun, Robert King, Politico, 07/31/2025
In a 26-3 vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $116.6 billion for HHS — a $446 million increase in discretionary funds compared with the current fiscal year.
Most of the increase — $400 million — would go to the National Institutes of Health, for which the White House had requested a 40 percent cut — nearly 18 billion from the agency’s $47 billion. Instead, the research agency would get $48.7 billion in the next fiscal year if the Senate bill becomes law.
Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the legislation “prioritizes funding to help make Americans healthier and supports life saving medical research, including through targeted funding increases for Alzheimer’s, cancer, Lyme disease, heart disease, ALS, diabetes and rare disease research.”
The bill maintains current funding levels for the CDC, appropriating about $9.2 billion. The White House proposed slashing the CDC’s budget by roughly half to refocus the agency on infectious diseases.
The legislation appropriates $7.4 billion for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat in the Senate Appropriations panel, said before the vote that the bill “rejects Trump’s cuts that would have devastated our workforce to fight substance use disorders, HIV and pandemics.”
She slammed White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and accused the White House of not telling Congress whether 2025 funds are being spent as intended.
The administration froze, then released NIH funding this week as part of what a spokesperson for OMB called a “programmatic review” of agency funding.
The legislation ignores Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s planned HHS reorganization. His overhaul would fold multiple agencies, including the Health Resources and Services Administration, SAMHSA and some CDC programs into a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America, for which the administration requested $14 billion in discretionary funding.
Amendments: Senators approved an amendment in the bill’s manager’s package limiting the administration’s plan to shift funding most NIH grants over a period of several years to funding them up front in the first year.
The amendment states that none of the funds appropriated for fiscal 2026 may be used to increase the proportion of grants fully funded in the first year of the award, compared with fiscal year 2024. The NIH can only increase that proportion of forward-funded grants if the agency ensures it isn’t cutting grants to do so.
Senators also approved an amendment focused on rural hospitals by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on a 16-13 vote.
The amendment intends to bring more transparency to a process in which a hospital would lose its critical access status. That status gives rural hospitals more Medicare dollars. The amendment, which mandates CMS to give the committee a report on why it is terminating the status, reopened rancor surrounding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who chairs the subcommittee in charge of the HHS funding bill, said the amendment will help bring transparency surrounding reauthorization of critical access hospitals. A rural hospital can apply to become a critical access facility to get more Medicaid dollars, but has to meet certain criteria.
Democrats charged the amendment does nothing to combat major cuts to Medicaid in Republicans’ megabill, which will axe an estimated $1 trillion in health spending over the next decade, with most of it coming from Medicaid, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
The megabill caps two financial gimmicks used by states to get more federal Medicaid dollars, which can in turn raise payment rates for rural hospitals. The hospital industry says the tools are used to compensate for Medicaid not fully covering their costs, but Republicans counter the tools amount to “money laundering” that is costing the federal government.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the top Democrat in the subcommittee that oversees the HHS funding bill, said the amendment “does nothing to address the existential threat that rural hospitals are facing.”
Senate appropriators rejected an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to reinstate all grants and awards the Trump administration halted, with the exception of those where there was evidence of financial mismanagement. Durbin gave examples of universities from blue and red states that had their grants halted, including for health research into a pacemaker for babies with congenital heart disease.
Republicans argued that every administration has the prerogative to implement its priorities and voted the amendment down.
What’s next? The bill is now cleared for floor action. But congressional leaders haven’t started bipartisan negotiations toward overall government funding totals, increasing the odds that lawmakers will again resort to a stopgap funding patch before the next fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.