House GOP Votes Down Amendments to Restore Funding for Meals on Wheels, AIDS Prevention

House Republicans have struck down a pair of amendments to fully fund the Meals on Wheels program and AIDS prevention as part of this week's markup process for the fiscal year 2026 US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget.

The amendments were proposed by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) to the bill recently released by the House Appropriations Committee, which proposes to cut HHS funding by 6%.

Part of that funding comes from Meals on Wheels, the charity that provides an estimated 250 million meals each year to senior citizens unable to cook for themselves. The charity says that 9 in 10 of its providers receive some amount of federal funding and that for 60% of them, it represents more than half their operating budget.

According to Pocan, who spoke Monday on the House floor, the Republican bill underfunds the food assistance program by $600 million, which he says is likely to cost 1.9 million people their access to food.

"Republicans in the appropriations process are leaving seniors to starve," Pocan said.

Combined with the $187 billion already cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which Republicans passed in July, Pocan said it amounts to "the largest cut to food assistance in our nation's history."

Pocan juxtaposed these cuts with the "extravagant dinner" hosted this weekend at Trump's new, private White House "Rose Garden Club," which White House social media shows featured "steak and a fudge-filled seven-layer cake."

"I guess the theme of the White House event was 'let them eat cake,'" Pocan joked.

When he proposed the amendment as part of the markup process on Tuesday, Pocan spoke about his elderly mother's experience relying on the Meals on Wheels program when she dealt with mobility issues.

"I would hope that this is something where we could get together and say, 'Yeah, this should be a priority... We respect our seniors and we're going to show that through Meals on Wheels," Pocan said before his House colleagues.

Every single Republican on the Appropriations Committee voted against the amendment.

Republicans also unanimously struck down Pocan's amendment to restore nearly $2 billion for AIDS prevention cut from the House GOP bill, which makes up 25% of the total budget cuts to HHS.

In June, the Foundation for AIDS Research projected that Trump's proposal to cut $1.3 billion worth of HIV prevention funds "could cause an additional 144,000 new HIV diagnoses, 15,000 deaths, and 128,000 more people living with HIV in the US by 2030."

The Appropriations Committee budget goes even further than Trump's proposed budget released earlier this year, cutting over $1.7 billion worth of AIDS prevention funding.

It calls for the total elimination of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding to combat HIV and cuts $220 million allocated to Trump's own Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative. It also eliminates $525 million from the Ryan White Program, which provides grants to over 400 HIV/AIDS clinics providing care and treatment.

"This is not a bill for making America healthy again, but a disastrous bill that will reignite HIV in the United States," said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. "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."

After Republicans voted down his amendment to reverse these "devastating" cuts, Pocan wrote on X, "They're happy to give even more to the wealthiest with giant tax breaks, but when it comes to helping people in need, there's never enough to go around."