Tammy Baldwin Asked What Democrats Can Do To Stop President Trump's NIH Cuts

On "Forbes Newsroom," Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) discussed proposed cuts to NIH.

Transcript

00:00It's great to join you. So let's start with the NIH budget and the cuts that were unveiled

00:05just yesterday. Can you contextualize what does 40% mean? What would it look like? What does

00:11America most need to know about this proposed budget? So in addition to the failure to grant

00:18new awards under NIH, we have seen the interruption of research in progress because

00:27somehow the administration has deemed that this research goes against President Trump's

00:37executive order on DEI. By way of an example, studying racial disparities in Alzheimer's

00:45or whether certain conditions have disproportionate or disparate impacts on certain communities,

00:52they've halted the research in progress. We're seeing devastating results from this

00:58today. And of course, his proposal for next year would be even worse.

01:06Devastating impacts today, proposal for next year, even worse. My question to you,

01:11you are a Democratic senator. What can Democrats do to stop this? Is there any recourse?

01:16There certainly is recourse. And that's because the National Institutes for Health have almost

01:23always enjoyed strong bipartisan support. And already, some of my Republican colleagues have

01:31joined all of the Democrats in pushing back against the Trump administration's handling of NIH,

01:39be that the firing of many scientists who have worked for NIH for decades, or whether that's their conduct in

01:53failing to award grants that otherwise would have been awarded. So we're seeing a pushback. In fact,

02:01the Senate Appropriations Committee on which I sit, had its very first hearing of the year on cuts at

02:11the NIH. And so I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to restore that funding. But we will be fighting

02:19against the administration every step of the way.

02:23When you talk about the bipartisan support that the NIH has historically enjoyed, and some of the current

02:29pushback from your Republican colleagues in the Senate, we have seen Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski say

02:36that they are concerned. To really make any sort of inroads here, you need two more Republican senators

02:42to join you to override J.D. Vance's tie-breaking vote. Do you think you can get those two more? And if so,

02:51what are the mechanisms going on behind the scenes to get that?

02:53Yes. So in this particular case, when we're talking about writing the appropriations bill

03:02for fiscal year 2026, so when we're talking about the fact that President Trump proposed

03:10the president's budget, but it's actually Congress that writes the budget and funds the departments.

03:16And so that's where the showdown will come. The Senate Appropriations Committee will write a bill.

03:23I predict that bill will fully fund the NIH at current levels or even above and will resist the cuts that

03:34the president has proposed. And then we're going to need 60 votes to pass that. But that's, you know,

03:41it is the Congress that sets the budget and appropriates money and funds the agencies and the

03:49departments. And we will probably just ignore President Trump's budget when we come to next

04:00fiscal year. But in the meantime, they've shown us their cards. They've shown us what they would do.

04:06And we've seen also, since the very first day of this Trump administration, a push and tug between

04:14Congress and the presidency. It is the Congress that passes laws. It is the Congress that sets the

04:20budgets. It is the Congress that funds the agencies. And it is the administration's job to implement

04:27those laws and to administer those agencies as Congress sets out in law. And right now they're

04:35flouting us and we're seeing ourselves in court. And we're, we're going to see whether they have any

04:45influence moving forward on the fiscal year 2026 budget.