House Republicans Go Way Beyond President’s Budget by Ending all HIV Prevention & Slash AIDS Care by 20%

Hepatitis Prevention Rolled into State Block Grant

Washington DC… The House Appropriations Committee released its FY26 funding bill, which proposes to cut domestic HIV care, treatment, and prevention programs by at least $1.7 billion, an amount far larger than even what the president proposed in his budget.

The bill eliminates all HIV prevention in the United States and President Trump’s own Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative while cutting the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Program by $525 million or 20 percent.

“This is not a bill for making America healthy again, but a disastrous bill that will reignite HIV in the United States,” commented Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “We urge Congress to reject these reckless cuts. Eliminating all HIV prevention means the end of state and local testing and surveillance programs, educational programs, and linkage to lifesaving care and treatment, along with PrEP. It will translate into an increased number of new HIV infections, which will be costlier to treat in the long run. At a time when we have the tools to prevent HIV, including new long-acting forms of PrEP, we must not abandon the bipartisan progress our nation has made in combatting HIV.”

The bill eliminates all $1 billion in prevention funding at the CDC, including $220 million allocated to President Trump’s Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative. Nearly 90 percent of this funding flows to state and local health departments, including those in the South that do not have dedicated state funding and carry over half of HIV cases in the country.

In a major departure from the past, the bill eliminates $525 million from the Ryan White Program, including grants to over 400 HIV/AIDS clinics providing care and treatment and the $165 million in EHE funding being used to bring more people into care and treatment.

The $157 million EHE program for community health centers to provide PrEP in targeted jurisdictions is also eliminated and the Minority HIV/AIDS Fund is reduced to $20 million from $65 million.

The Committee is supporting the president’s budget proposal to eliminate $43 million in dedicated funding for hepatitis prevention at the CDC and instead proposes a $353 million block grant to states that would also include STD and tuberculosis prevention. This is $53 million more than the president proposed but still represents a combined cut of $24 million.

“Instead of decreasing and diluting funding for hepatitis, if the country is serious about addressing chronic health conditions,” added Schmid, “we should be increasing funding so that people with hepatitis can be identified through testing and linked to treatment, and in the case of hepatitis C, a cure.”

The bill does not include authorizing language to create the Administration for a Healthy American (AHA) but does include $100 million for MAHA activities.

Schmid concluded, “Just last month, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya issued his top priorities, which included the elimination of HIV in the United States, and eloquently proclaimed in a podcast the need to get the job done and evoked President Trump’s 2019 goal to end HIV. In order to attain those goals, these cuts must be rejected.”

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Senate released a bipartisan FY26 spending bill that maintains current domestic HIV programs. If this bill ever passes the Committee, it would have to be reconciled with the Senate version of the bill and pass the entire Congress.

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The HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute is a national, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote quality and affordable healthcare for people living with or at risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other serious and chronic health conditions.