On February 14, 2011, President Obama presented his $3.7 trillion FY 2012 budget request to Congress, outlining his spending priorities for the coming year. As expected the budget includes a five-year freeze on non-security, discretionary federal programs. Consistent with the current focus on deficit-reduction in Washington, it also proposes a long list of program reductions or eliminations. On the health care front, for the first time in 30 years the budget includes a small reduction in overall funding for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), cutting discretionary budget authority from $79.99 billion in FY 2010 to $79.92 billion in FY 2012. This trend in flat funding was seen widely across HHS, with the exception of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which scored a 29 percent increase over FY 2010, and the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Community Health Centers program, which had its funding increased by 50 percent to $3.2 billion in FY 2012.
This fact sheet provides an overview of how the President’s budget proposal would impact children’s health programs.