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The Department of Health and Human Services would receive $69 billion under the president’s budget proposal, a reduction of 17.9 percent that would send spending in one of the government’s largest and most sprawling departments to its lowest level in nearly two decades. (Goldstein, 3/16)

President Donald Trump is proposing big cuts in federal spending on biomedical research and the elimination of subsidies that help poor people heat their homes as part of a budget that would reduce discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services by 23 percent. The cuts are sure to provoke an outcry from Democrats and Republicans who have long backed a robust budget for the National Institutes of Health, as well as from research universities, advocates for cancer patients, victims of heart disease and other conditions, and lawmakers from northern states dependent on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. (Tracer and Edney, /16)

President Trump’s budget calls for a seismic disruption in government-funded medical and scientific research. The cuts are deep and broad. They also go beyond what many political observers expected. Trump had made clear that he would target the Environmental Protection Agency, but the budget blueprint calls for a startling downsizing of agencies that historically have received steady bipartisan support. The National Institutes of Health, for example, would be cut by nearly $6 billion, about a fifth of the NIH budget. (Achenbach, 3/16)

President Trump's proposed budget takes a cleaver to domestic programs, with many agencies taking percentage spending cuts in the double digits. But for dozens of smaller agencies and programs, the cut is 100%. (Korte, 3/16)

The agency passes out more than 80 percent of its money to more than 300,000 researchers at universities across the country and abroad. It also has hundreds of researchers conducting studies in labs at its sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md. Its world-renowned clinical center treats patients from around the world seeking last-chance cures and volunteers testing cutting-edge therapies. (Bernstein, 3/16)

The Department of Veterans Affairs, the second-largest federal agency with 313,000 civilian employees and a far-flung hospital system, is one of the few corners of the government that would see its budget grow in the next fiscal year — by 6 percent. (Rein, 3/16)

The budget’s main focus is the $54 billion defense boost over budget caps set under current law. It also revisits many themes Mr. Trump set out during the presidential race, including setting aside funding for a southern border wall—and lawyers to obtain land along the border needed for the wall—school choice, the nation’s nuclear arsenal, veterans’ health and treatment of opioid addiction. (Sparshott and Mann, 3/16)

Ever since the Ebola and Zika epidemics, public health officials have advocated for a special emergency fund that would allow the United States to respond rapidly to disease outbreaks. This budget blueprint creates a new Federal Emergency Response Fund, but provides no specifics about how large it would be or where the funds will come from. (Sun, 3/16)