By Ahmed Aboulenein and Mariam Sunny
Washington: The Trump administration is proposing a $6.8 billion budget request for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the 2026 fiscal year, its Commissioner Martin Makary said on Thursday, a cut of around 5.5% from its $7.2 billion budget this year.
The White House had on May 2 proposed reducing U.S. health spending by more than a quarter next year, with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facing the brunt of billions of dollars in cuts.
The proposed budget requested $93.8 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services – a cut of $33.3 billion, or 26.2% – from this year’s budget of $127 billion, but did not mention the FDA. Makary’s comments on Thursday were the first official outlining of the agency’s 2026 budget request.
“The Trump administration is proposing a $6.8 billion budget for the FDA,” Makary told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies at a hearing on the budget.
The FDA in 2025 had a budget of $7.2 billion, including $3.5 billion in user fees, payments made by pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to fund the staff resources needed to review their products quickly, conduct inspections, and ensure the safety of clinical trials.
Makary said that nearly 1,900 people were laid off at the FDA as part of a massive restructuring of federal health agencies under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to align with President Donald Trump’s goal of dramatically shrinking the federal government.
No scientific reviewer or inspector was cut as a part of the reduction in force, he added. Democratic senators pushed back, asking Makary about media reports of the FDA firing and later rehiring scientists. He said the scientists were not fired but rather scheduled for firing before the decision was reversed.
A further 1,200 took early retirement packages and the agency is hiring more scientists to replace them, Makary said.
The staffing changes have not impacted approval schedules and the agency is on track to meet its treatment review targets under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, known as PDUFA, he said. (Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington and Mariam Sunny in Bangalore; Editing by Mark Porter, Conor Humphries and Aurora Ellis)
