Trump’s Budget Request Cuts Programs That Help Ordinary Americans and Sinks That Money Toward War

On April 3, 2026, President Donald Trump submitted his annual budget request to Congress, calling for historic cuts to domestic funding and shifting that money toward historic increases in the military budget. Across steep cuts to education, housing, health, and other priorities, the budget calls for cutting nondefense discretionary funding—the portion of the budget that funds most domestic activities aside from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—to its lowest levels as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) since at least the Eisenhower administration. In contrast, the Trump administration’s budget calls for the biggest annual increase in the military budget as a share of GDP outside a ground war in U.S. history—and the largest increase inclusive of ground wars in more than 50 years. Within the context of the war in Iran, the budget should be seen as taking money away from Americans and sinking it into war.

In many ways, this budget is simply a continuation of the Trump administration’s previous cuts to the critical government programs that help hardworking American families. Last July, President Trump signed into law his “Big Beautiful Bill,” which instituted the largest cuts to both Medicaid and SNAP in history, while at the same time cutting taxes disproportionately for the richest Americans. Taken as a whole, that law was the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history. This budget would double down on the president’s legacy of taking resources from struggling Americans.

Some of the programs that will see cuts under president’s budget request

The Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts are severe and would significantly reduce federal assistance to ordinary Americans. Here are some of the cuts in the president’s budget request:

• Community Services Block Grants: This program works to alleviate poverty by providing funds to states, territories, and Tribes to administer direct support to the neediest and most destitute people in the country, sometimes giving necessary unconditional aid. More than 10 million people across the country are helped annually by these grants. President Trump’s budget calls to eliminate the program entirely.
• Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): After the Big Beautiful Bill enacted the deepest cuts to SNAP in history last year, the president’s budget would continue to make food less affordable through cuts to the WIC program, which serves roughly 40 to 50 percent of all infants born in the United States. This is a program that is strongly linked to improved birth and development outcomes. Yet the proposed budget would cut the monthly WIC fruit and vegetable benefit by $1.4 billion, reducing it from $54 to $13 for breastfeeding mothers and from $27 to $10 for young children, according to the National WIC Association.
• Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP): This program helps struggling families heat their homes in the winter and cool their homes in the summer, working to prevent people from freezing to death or dying of heat stroke. In fiscal year 2024, 5.9 million households across all 50 states received assistance from LIHEAP. The president’s budget calls to eliminate the program entirely.
• HOME Investment Partnerships Program: This program provides funding to state and local governments to create low-income housing. The grants can be used to construct new housing or to assist low-income people in their housing needs. Since its launch in 1992, the HOME program has helped build or repair more than 1.3 million affordable homes for low-income families. The president’s budget calls to eliminate the program entirely.
• Section 8 housing: This program helps poor households afford rent, giving special preference to households with children, people with disabilities, and veterans. The budget calls to prohibit housing authorities from issuing tenant-based vouchers to new families, with a few exemptions. If this prohibition were continued every year, it would set the program on a path toward complete destruction in the long run.
• National Institutes of Health (NIH): The NIH funds groundbreaking medical research, supporting discoveries to enable Americans to live longer, healthier lives. The budget calls to cut NIH funding by 13 percent, or $6 billion. These proposed cuts would be widespread, including a 7 percent cut to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; a 7 percent cut to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; a 7 percent cut to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; a 27 percent cut to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; a 7 percent cut to the National Institute on Aging; a 6 percent cut to the National Human Genome Research Institute; and a 7 percent cut to the Eunice K. Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Moreover, these cuts run counter to public opinion: A poll last year found that more than 90 percent of voters said it was important for the United States to be the global leader in medical research and for the government to fund it.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): As the nation’s public health agency, the CDC works to keep Americans safe and healthy through a variety of different means, including tracking infectious diseases, researching new and emerging threats, and advancing prevention of chronic conditions. State and local public health programs receive about half their funding from the federal government, much of it from the CDC—which also conducts research to better understand and prevent health problems for Americans. The president’s budget calls to cut the CDC by 32 percent, or $2.5 billion.
• Federal K-12 funding: The federal government supplements state and local education budgets, working to help where children fall behind. The president’s budget calls to zero out 17 K-12 programs and replace them with just one, which would not guarantee that specific student needs are met; it also calls to reduce these programs’ net funding by 69 percent, or $4.5 billion. These programs include the Education for Homeless Children and Youths program, the Rural Education program, and Comprehensive Literacy State Development grants. Additionally, the president’s budget calls to eliminate 12 other K-12 funding streams entirely, including the English Language Acquisition program, for an additional $2.1 billion in cuts.
• Higher education programs: The federal government works to help students access, afford, and achieve success in higher education through a variety of grant programs. For example, the TRIO and GEAR UP programs provide academic support, mentoring, and financial aid counseling to help students from low-income backgrounds attend college. Meanwhile, the Strengthening Institutions Program (SIP) provides direct funding to higher education institutions that serve high shares of low-income students, including community and technical colleges, to strengthen academic quality and support student success. In the past few years, GEAR UP funding has been awarded to institutions across the country, including the University of South Carolina, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, GEAR UP Iowa 3.0, and the University of Wyoming. Additionally, TRIO supported 869,000 students in 2024, while SIP supported 301 institutions across the country in 2023. The president’s budget calls to eliminate many of the activities inside the higher education budget account—such as TRIO, GEAR UP, and SIP—while freezing other activities. In total, the budget calls to cut the higher education account by 81 percent, or $2.7 billion.
• Preschool development grants: The Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five program is the only federal funding stream dedicated to building and improving state-level early childhood systems. The competitive grant program allows states to apply for funding to improve coordination among existing early childhood programs such as child care, Head Start, state prekindergarten, and home-visiting programs. Coordination across the early childhood programs helps advance equitable access for all families. Since funds first became available in 2018, 54 states and territories have received planning grants and 48 have received renewal grants, showing widespread uptake and bipartisan support for the program. The president’s budget calls to eliminate it entirely.
• Workforce development programs: The federal government helps youth prepare for the workforce and helps adults build skills. Job Corps prepares 16- to 24-year-olds for careers through career and technical education, enrollment in postsecondary education, and connection to employment opportunities. The president’s budget proposes a 90 percent cut to Job Corps, functionally eliminating its activities. It also proposes to entirely eliminate the adult education activities in the Career, Technical, and Adult Education program, which helps adults improve literacy and other crucial skills such as reading, writing, math, and problem-solving, as well as obtain a high school diploma or high school equivalent.
• Wage and Hour Division: The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is responsible for promoting and enforcing many labor laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, and for enforcing the minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor laws. It also works to investigate and recover wages that were illegally not paid, known as wage theft—estimated to cost workers more than $50 billion each year. This significantly exceeds the combined losses from larceny, burglary, and vehicle theft. In fiscal year 2025, the Wage and Hour Division recovered more than $259 million in back wages for 176,957 employees nationwide, totaling more than $1,450 per person, on average. The president’s budget calls to cut the office’s funding by 10 percent, or $25 million.
• Small Business Administration (SBA): The SBA helps small businesses in America grow and succeed by expanding access to capital, both for business creation and for undertaking new investments. It also helps small businesses win federal government contracts, provides free or low-cost counseling such as business advice and technical assistance, and provides disaster assistance to small businesses and homeowners. In fiscal year 2025, the SBA approved a total of 84,203 loans in 50 states and Washington, D.C., to small businesses through its 7(a) and 504 loan programs, which support refinancing buildings and real estate, purchasing new machinery and equipment, and other investments. The budget calls to cut SBA funding by 51 percent, or $513 million. In addition, it proposes to impose new fees on lenders that would likely be passed to small businesses for using its guaranteed loan programs. The administration estimates these fees would cost lenders $158 million next year, with much of this amount likely to be passed to small-business borrowers.

Historic increases in the military budget

These and other cuts that ask struggling Americans to make do with less stand in stark contrast to the bloated military budget, which the president calls to increase $445 billion above this year’s levels—the largest one-year increase outside of a ground war in history—despite the Pentagon repeatedly failing to pass an audit.

The military portion of the budget is deliberately light on details, but from what has been released so far, there is meaningful waste. For example, the budget calls to sink more money into Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense programs, including space-based interceptors. The Trump administration expects to use $21.1 billion on the Golden Dome this year, already a significant amount for a system that is unlikely to ever be operational, let alone provide the full missile defense capabilities for which it calls. The budget requests an additional $17.5 billion for the Golden Dome system for fiscal year 2027.

In addition, the budget calls for a sizable increase in shipbuilding and procurement: $65.8 billion, a 46 percent, or $20.7 billion, increase above this year’s levels. This increase would fund 24 additional naval ships as part of the Trump administration’s fanciful “Golden Fleet” proposal, including providing initial funding for two “Trump-class” battleships. Naval analysts have long believed that battleships are impractical for today’s security challenges and that the Trump-class battleship is a dangerous vanity project.

Conclusion

Taken as a whole, the Trump administration’s budget would rob Americans of crucial services, expanding the Defense Department’s resources for unnecessary military projects and escalating the unjustified war in Iran. That war has already killed more than 1,600 civilians, including more than 200 children, as well as at least 13 American service members—all while costing more than $25 billion. A nation’s budget reflects its values because budgets force prioritization at the margin, given limited resources. This budget request seeks a poor use of America’s national resources, making a clear statement that the Trump administration believes struggling Americans are on their own.

The author would like to thank Jazmine Amoako, Viviann Anguiano, Emily Gee, Dan Herman, Corey Husak, David Madland, Damian Murphy, Natasha Murphy, Michael Negron, Sara Partridge, Casey Peeks, Becca Siegel, Paige Shoemaker DeMio, Topher Spiro, Karla Walter, Mimla Wardak, and Nick Wilson.