Earlier this week President Trump released his 2019 budget proposal to Congress. His FY 2019 budget request totals $4.4 trillion for the next fiscal year and includes cuts to programs that benefit low-income children and their families including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicaid, and eliminating the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The proposal reduces the funding for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by 21 percent. For FY 2019 HHS funding would be set at $68.4 billion in discretionary funding down from $69 billion in FY 2018 and $84.1 billion in FY 2017.
Along with Medicaid and CHIP funding cuts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received a cut of more than $1 billion, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) budget is reduced by almost $700 million, and the Administration for Children and Families sees a decline in funding of almost $4 billion.
The Trump budget calls to repeal the ACA including the Medicaid expansion. The budget imposes Medicaid per-capita-caps and block grants as well as promoting the Medicaid work requirement policy recently introduced by CMS.
The Trump budget proposal would allow states to continue to give Medicaid coverage to individuals before proving their citizenship or immigration eligibility upon application to the program, but would end federal reimbursement for that coverage while individuals document their status.
The President’s budget doesn’t match up with the two-year budget deal that he signed into law on Friday, February 9th, 2018.
That bill raised military and domestic spending by $300 billion. However this budget letter says the president proposes to transfer much of that agreed-to domestic spending into defense spending after all.
View our full fact sheet and analysis.