Trump Budget Plan Will Test GOP Lawmakers’ Loyalty

The White House’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, which President Donald Trump unveiled
on Friday, asks Congress to slash billions of dollars from health programs, setting up a
test of Republican lawmakers’ loyalty.
Already, one of the most important, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine),
said she had “serious objections” to the proposed cuts to biomedical research,
among other things.

Congress has rarely adhered to presidents’ budget requests, which are typically taken more as a signal of the administration’s priorities than a serious legislative proposal. But Trump showed at the end of last year, when he scuttled a bipartisan funding bill, and again in March, when he insisted on mostly flat funding for fiscal 2025, that he holds unparalleled sway over the Republican caucus.
The House GOP’s ability to stick together in passing the March bill showed how the sort of deep cuts Trump is envisioning are within the realm of possibility. That’s because Senate Democrats are divided over using a government shutdown as a means of pushing back against Trump. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
led a group of 10 Democrats
in helping Republicans send the March bill, which covered the government’s costs through September, to Trump.
But that required GOP unity, and Trump’s new proposal, which would set funding levels starting Oct. 1, doesn’t look as likely to command it.

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Interest groups whose members rely on HHS funding have already begun to lobby against it. “The president’s proposed cuts will dramatically slow U.S. medical research and innovation, taking away health and hope from Americans,” said Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America, which represents universities, pharmaceutical companies and disease advocacy groups.