What Trump’s Proposed Budget Cuts From Higher Education And Research

President Trump unveiled his FY2027 discretionary budget request on Friday. As part of the $2.2 trillion White House proposal, military spending would receive $1.5 trillion, a boost of $445 billion — more than 40% over what the U.S. was set to spend on defense this fiscal year. That request comes at the same time the U.S. is becoming more ensnared in its war with Iran, which is estimated to be costing the country more than $1 billion a day.

To partially offset that increase, the administration called for $73 billion in reduced domestic spending, a 10% cut spread across several federal agencies that support social services, health, research, housing and education programs.

The president’s budget proposal is a financial reflection of the administration’s priorities, a wish list that Congress, which is ultimately responsible for the laws that control federal spending, is unlikely to adopt. But the budget does reveal the policy agenda that the executive branch intends to pursue, and this proposal is loaded with requests for the military, law enforcement, border security, and security infrastructure.

Funding for many domestic programs, by contrast, is slashed, with them being frequently dismissed as “woke,” wasteful,” and “inefficient.” At one point, budget documents promise to eliminate “the weaponized rot in our Federal Government once and for all.” At another, they vow that “President Trump is ”committed to eliminating radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans.”

Here’s a preliminary look at some of the steepest cuts proposed for federal research and higher education programs for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins October 1.

Research Cutbacks

Trump proposes a $5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health’s budget for 2027. Although that’s substantially less than the 40% cut he asked for last year, a request that was roundly rejected by Congress, it would eliminate several institutes and centers at the NIH, including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

The justification for the NIH cuts? According to the budget book, “NIH broke the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

The National Science Foundation would face a 55% cut to its budget, essentially the same percentage reduction that Trump proposed — and Congress also rejected — for the current year. If Trump’s preferred cuts were enacted, NSF would see its budget reduced from $8.8 billion to $4 billion, and all funding for the social, behavioral and economic sciences division would end.

At other research-related agencies:

Cuts To Education

According to the White House, the president’s budget “puts the Department of Education (ED), which has failed the Nation’s children, teachers, and families on a path to elimination.” Included in an overall 2.9% reduction for the department is a $8.5 billion cut for dozens of K-12 programs that Trump wants either to eliminate or consolidate. The administration aims to move a number of federal programs into $2 billion “Make Education Great Again” block grants to the states, which they could spend at their discretion.

For higher education, the president recommends cuts totalling $2.7 billion. Examples include:

One silver lining in the proposal is a $10.5 billion increase for federal Pell Grants, bringing total Pell funding to $33 billion, and setting the maximum award at $7,395 for the 2027-28 award year.

Reactions To The Plan

Reactions to the budget proposal were sharply divided along partisan lines. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, commended Trump’s request as “truly historic,” claimimg that “it is more than justified by the threats we face throughout the world.”

Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, promised that Democrats “will make sure it never passes.”

Senator Patty Murray (D-Wahington), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued a statement that said, “the vision President Trump has outlined for America in his budget is bleak and unacceptable. President Trump wants to slash medical research to fund costly foreign wars. It doesn’t get more backward than that, and the only responsible thing to do with a budget this morally bankrupt is to toss it in the trash.”

The Association of American Universities issued a statement urging Congress to “reject these short-sighted cuts and increase investments in America’s scientific enterprise to ensure that our nation continues to lead the world – and that all Americans keep benefitting from the greatest research-and-innovation engine the world has ever known.”

While the president’s budget blueprint cuts billions in domestic spending, it would likely result in a deficit that surpasses the $1.9 trillion federal hole that’s projected for FY 2026, adding significantly to the nation’s overall debt, which now exceeds $39 trillion.

Independent agencies of different persuasions were quick to voice their concerns about the long-term implications of increased deficit spending. The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, a progressive think tank, criticized the plan for using “implausible assumptions to make its numbers look better than they are likely to be,” adding that it “provides no roadmap for seizing opportunities or addressing our challenges. It is fundamentally unserious.”

The libertarian-leaning Cato Institute posted an analysis that read in part, “the presidential budget is supposed to be the administration’s opportunity to explain to the American people how it would put our budget back on track. This budget entirely fails to do so. It includes no comprehensive 10-year fiscal plan to address mandatory spending and revenue, and thus no path to stabilizing the debt.”

This article was originally published on Forbes.com