The Trump administration tore into healthcare provisions in the Senate’s latest spending bill, including for increased funding for medical research and to maintain a teen pregnancy prevention program.
Ignoring President Trump’s budget, the Senate assembled a spending bill that increases funding for the National Institutes of Health by nearly $2 billion. Trump had called for a 20 percent reduction in spending for the agency, which funds medical research and was allotted a record $37.1 billion earlier this year.
The White House also said it was “disappointed” that the Senate had further ignored a request by Trump to consolidate several other agencies into the NIH. It wrote that in all the bill included funding for these agencies and NIH totaling $700 million above what Trump requested.
“The Administration strongly supports actions that reduce overlap in government programs and increase efficiency, and looks forward to working with the Congress to achieve these goals,” the White House said in a Statement of Administration Policy.
The Senate’s spending bill also ignores a request to end the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which was set up in 2010 under former President Barack Obama and provides grants for sex education. The Trump administration tried to end the program itself but a court ruled it couldn’t do so.
The Senate’s bill provides $101 million in funding for the program, a move slammed by the White House.
“The TPP program serves less than one percent of teenagers in the United States,” the White House wrote. “Although the teenage pregnancy rate has declined significantly, the evidence suggests that TPP has not been a major driver in that reduction.”
Debate over the latest spending bill by the Senate is expected to begin Thursday. Senators are blending together appropriations measures on defense as well as on labor, education, and healthcare. Together, they account for nearly 3 out of every 4 discretionary dollars to be spent in fiscal 2019.
Congress is concerned about facing a government shutdown, so leaders have been pressing to pass as many bills as they can before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. The latest will be the third “minibus” of appropriations bills, but Trump has threatened to veto the measures if they do not include billions of dollars in funding for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
