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house appropriations committee
House GOP Votes Down Amendments to Restore Funding for Meals on Wheels, AIDS Prevention
"They're happy to give even more to the wealthiest with giant tax breaks," said Rep. Mark Pocan, "but when it comes to helping people in need, there's never enough to go around."
Sep 10, 2025
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."
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Confirmation of Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought Expected to Intensify Lawless Trump Rampage
"Now that Vought is officially running the show, he'll be able to unleash his radical agenda across the federal government. And if the courts stop him, he's got a billionaire friend with the government's keys and checkbook: Elon Musk."
Feb 07, 2025
In a party-line vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate confirmed right-wing extremist and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead the White House budget office as the Trump administration works to unilaterally dismantle entire federal agencies and choke off funding already approved by Congress.
Vought's confirmation, backed only by Republican votes in the Senate, comes after the chamber's Democrats used up all 30 hours of debate on his nomination to warn of the damage he could inflict as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Lawmakers and progressive activists echoed those warnings in the wake of his confirmation. Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement that "Vought's fingerprints are all over last week's illegal funding freeze."
"Halting funding for Americans' healthcare, childcare, and food assistance wasn't a bug," said Jacquez. "It was by design, and Project 2025 is the blueprint. Now that Vought is officially running the show, he'll be able to unleash his radical agenda across the federal government. And if the courts stop him, he's got a billionaire friend with the government's keys and checkbook: Elon Musk."
During his confirmation process, Vought expressed agreement with Trump's view that the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (ICA)—a law passed in response to former President Richard Nixon's refusal to spend congressionally approved funds on programs he opposed—is unconstitutional, a view that Musk has also expressed.
Politico reported Thursday that Vought "is expected to soon press his theory on impoundments, the idea that the president can ignore congressional spending edicts." Analysts have argued that even without the ICA, unilateral impoundments of the kind the Trump White House is expected to pursue in the coming months and years would still be unconstitutional.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Thursday that "in confirming Vought, Republicans have put their stamp of approval on ending American democracy—built on three co-equal branches of government—and on creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires."
"Our nation is facing an extraordinary crisis," said DeLauro. "Donald Trump is attempting to claim absolute power for the presidency. The chaos, confusion, and flagrantly unconstitutional actions of the early days of this administration are largely of Vought's design and doing. With Vought's encouragement, the administration has taken the groundless position—and demonstrated—that they believe the White House has the absolute power to determine spending, and that they can choose to simply not fund programs and services that Congress has promised to the American people. This could not be further from the truth."
"The Constitution empowers Congress, not the president, with the power of the purse," DeLauro continued. "The president is not a king who can pick and choose which laws to follow and which laws to ignore. But the president is relying on the guidance and counsel of Russ Vought to do just that."
In one of his appearances before the Senate last month, Vought told lawmakers that he views the Clinton-era welfare reform law that doubled extreme poverty as a crowning achievement and declared that "we need to go after the mandatory programs," which include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
"Vought is an extremist who has made clear he'll ignore our nation's laws, cut funding that helps people across the country, and give Trump unprecedented and unconstitutional power," warned Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, following Vought's confirmation. "There will be consequences."
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Top Democrat Accuses House GOP of 'Full-Scale Attempt to Eliminate Public Education'
Rep. Rosa DeLauro said Republicans' newly proposed funding cuts threaten "the future of an entire generation."
Jun 26, 2024
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday accused her Republican colleagues of working to completely decimate U.S. public education by proposing steep cuts to key programs in a newly released funding bill.
Republicans on the appropriations panel, chaired by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), weren't shy about the expansive spending cuts they're pursuing: In a statement, the committee's GOP majority noted that its fiscal year 2025 funding legislation for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and other related agencies would fully eliminate 57 programs, slash 48 more, and reduce spending on K-12 education grants.
An appropriations subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the bill on Thursday morning.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in response to the majority's legislation that "Republicans are in the midst of a full-scale attempt to eliminate public education that makes the American Dream possible," noting that the proposal gashes "support for children in K-12 elementary schools, threatening the future of an entire generation."
According to a fact sheet released by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, the proposed GOP funding levels would cut the Department of Education by $11 billion, or 14% below 2024 levels. Specifically, the measure would slash Title I Grants to local educational agencies by roughly $5 billion, reducing assistance for school districts with a large number of students from low-income families.
Additionally, Democrats on the committee warned the bill would cut "mental health support in schools while children struggle to access the services they need" and eliminate "funding for English Language Acquisition and teacher training opportunities used to increase the number and improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers and school leader," while also targeting programs aimed at helping students access higher education.
On top of its education cuts, the bill would zero out "funding for Title X Family planning," "block funding for Planned Parenthood health centers," slash the Social Security Administration's operating budget, and curb spending on worker protections, according to the Democratic lawmakers' summary.
"This bill is dangerous and threatens programs and services that Americans depend on at every stage of their life," DeLauro said Wednesday.
Republicans' proposed cuts offer a glimpse of the GOP's plans for federal education funding should the party win full control of Congress and the presidency in November.
During a rally in Philadelphia this past weekend, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he would attempt to cut federal education funding in half if he's elected to another White House term.
Trump claimed such a cut would result in "much better education in some of the states."
"Some won't do as well," added the former president, who has also expressed support for eliminating the Department of Education altogether—a position aligned with that of Project 2025.
Trump's comments and congressional Republicans' latest push for deep funding cuts came as billionaire-funded organizations across the United States continued their effort to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars.
As Common Dreams reported, an analysis released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday highlighted the role that Betsy DeVos—who served as Trump's education secretary—and other billionaires in working to "undermine, dismantle, and sabotage our nation's public schools and to privatize our education system."
"We can no longer tolerate billionaires and multinational corporations receiving massive tax breaks and subsidies while children in America are forced to go to understaffed, underresourced, and underfunded public schools," Sanders said Tuesday.
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