On April 3, the Trump Administration finally released the Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) President’s Budget Request (PBR). The request is due to Congress on the first Monday of February. As with last year’s request, this budget proposes dramatic cuts to key federal agencies that fund scientific research, health innovation, and education. While this proposal outlines the Administration’s priorities, it does not set a final funding level – Congress does. For FY26, Congress largely rejected the president’s budget request, with many of these agencies receiving relatively flat funding. Nonetheless, the Trump Administration is proposing similar cuts for FY27.
FABBS Federal Funding Dashboard | Federal Budget Process Timeline
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Similar to last year, the FY27 budget proposed $4 billion for NSF — a cut of nearly 55 percent — reducing the agency’s budget from about $8.75 billion in FY26. All directorates face severe cuts, but the Administration has targeted the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) for elimination, zeroing it out in this proposal (see NSF budget appendix). FABBS is working closely with federal colleagues, congressional offices, and the broader scientific and academic communities to advocate for the continued funding of SBE (see FABBS article).
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Although the Administration has once again proposed to cut the NIH budget, this decrease is not nearly so drastic as last year’s. The PBR requests $41.2 billion for the agency in FY27, a $6 billion (or 13 percent) cut from the enacted FY26 budget of $47.2 billion. The document claims it is only a $5 billion cut, but does not include some previously approved funds in its FY26 figure (listed as $46.2 billion), creating a misleading comparison. For example, because funding from the 21st Century Cures Act will sunset in 2027, the PBR does not include those funds in the FY26 total. While the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences sees a small funding increase, the PBR gives all other institutes and centers (ICs) smaller budgets than they received in FY26.
The PBR includes a second attempt at restructuring NIH, albeit much more limited than last year’s proposal. It calls for the elimination of three ICs: the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Fogarty International Center, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. A fourth institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, would move to a new office in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The PBR also consolidates the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism into a new IC, the National Institute of Substance Abuse and Addiction Research. Importantly, only Congress has the authority to restructure NIH, and it has been encouraging NIH to undertake a deliberative process for evaluation and making recommendations for change.
F&A Rates and Multi-Year Funding
The Health and Human Services (HHS) Budget in Brief indicates that the Administration is again trying to cap facilities and administrative (F&A) cost rates — also known as indirect costs — at 15 percent. Congress soundly rejected this policy last year, including report language in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) appropriations bill prohibiting any department or agency from changing existing F&A regulations. Instead, Congress directed NIH and other funding agencies to work with the Appropriations Committees to improve how F&A cost rates are set. Additionally, the Budget in Brief states, “NIH will fully-fund upfront all research project grants in 2027” (p. 25), referring to multi-year funding, which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pushed for in 2025 and 2026 awards. Again, Congress opposed overuse of this funding mechanism and set limits on the amount of grants that NIH can fund in this manner. (see previous FABBS reporting.)
The Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, of which FABBS is a member, released a statement in response to the PBR, urging Congress to reject the proposal and instead appropriate at least $51.3 billion to NIH in FY27.
Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)
ARPA-H would receive $945 million in FY27, down from about $1.5 billion in FY26, a 37 percent cut. Such funding would severely limit ARPA-H’s ability to pursue high-risk, high-reward biomedical and behavioral research projects aimed at transformative breakthroughs in health and medicine. Unlike in its FY26 proposal, it seems that the Administration is keeping ARPA-H as its own agency, rather than moving it to a new office within HHS.
Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Department of Education (USED)
Consistent with Trump efforts to dismantle USED, the PBR proposes to cut its budget to $76.5 billion, a deduction of $2.3 billion from FY26’s $78.8 billion funding level. Like last year, the PBR cuts IES funding to $261.3 million, a decrease of about $527.7 million from FY26, about a 67 percent cut. Just $39.8 million is set aside for the Research, Development, and Dissemination program and $10 million for the Research in Special Education Program. The PBR would completely eliminate Regional Education Laboratories and the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems program. These drastic cuts would only compound the problems started by IES’s stalled FY25 appropriated funds. The proposal also raises questions about how IES could possibly be “reimagined” as “a more efficient, effective, and useful” agency with such poor funding (p. 52, USED FY27 Budget Summary).
Department of Energy (DOE)
In the DOE section (p.17), the PBR includes a “government-wide” ban on using federal research funds for “prohibitively high” publishing costs and “expensive” subscription fees. The proposal does not define a threshold for what it considers to be too high or costly. It also claims there are “numerous low-cost outlets” where researchers can make federally-funded science publicly available, but does not provide any examples. This point also does not consider whether such outlets would be appropriate for the research being shared.
Next Steps
As mentioned above, the PBR does not set the final funding levels for FY27, Congress does. Congress often uses the PBR as a starting point but its final appropriations can diverge significantly, as we saw for FY26. One step in the congressional budget process is bringing department leaders to the Hill to answer questions about their funding requests. So far, we have learned that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on April 16 and in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on April 22. He is expected to defend the requests for HHS agencies, including NIH and ARPA-H.
FABBS is working to communicate our opposition to and concerns raised by the PBR by educating members of Congress about the negative consequences and ripple effects of the proposed actions. We are collaborating with coalitions to amplify these concerns, meeting with Hill staff, signing letters, and submitting testimony to advocate for our sciences.
