The Trump administration's proposed budget isn't just unconscionable for how inhumane it is, it's a sweeping effort to hamstring science, setting back lifesaving advances in both medical research and treatment that will inevitably make our nation sicker and result in unneeded deaths.
Here's a brief look at the chopping block:
National Institutes of Health—$6 billion cut
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a 17 percent cut of $1.3 billion
Food and Drug Administration—a 31 percent cut, from $2.7 billion to $1.89 billion (supposedly offset by increased fees from drug and device makers)
Planned Parenthood—barred from Medicaid funding or any other Health and Human Services program
Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—at least a 20 percent cut over the next two fiscal years, as a part of overall cuts in Medicaid funding
The CDC director had some immediate thoughts to share about the budget:
The cuts would negatively impact everything from the National Cancer Institute to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to NASA. The Washington Post reports:
The National Science Foundation, which dispenses grants to a variety of scientific research endeavors, would be trimmed $776 million, an 11 percent cut. NSF had not been mentioned in the administration's earlier budget outline, the so-called "skinny budget," which was released in March. [...]
In a separate tweet, [CDC director] Frieden listed what he sees as the dire ramifications of the Trump proposal, saying, for starters, that it "Devastates programs that protect Americans from cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and other deadly and expensive conditions."
Also terminated would be NASA's Office of Education, as well as five NASA Earth Science missions that the administration considers to be low-priority. The administration said killing those Earth Science missions would save $191 million.
In addition to the budget's disastrous effects on health care, the cuts would also dampen job creation in the medical sector—one of the nation's biggest engines of economic growth.
Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said the Trump budget is short-sighted, particularly in assuming that economic growth won't be hampered by cuts in government-funded research.
"There's this rosy optimism that somehow growth will magically occur, and yet it cuts the principal source of that growth," Holt said. The proposal "savages research. Economists are clear: That’s where we ultimately get our economic growth.”
The budget was indeed so appalling that even some the GOP's most conservative members pushed back on the cuts.
One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, flinched at the thought of cutting NIH and such programs as Meals on Wheels. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), head of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, said of Meals on Wheels, “I’ve delivered meals to a lot of people that perhaps it’s their only hot meal of the day."
When you offend Mark Meadows with the inhumanity of your budget cuts, you're truly in the running for scum of the earth.
By Kerry Eleveld
