SAVE HIV FUNDING CAMPAIGN RESPONDS TO TRUMP FY27 BUDGET, URGES CONGRESS TO PROTECT PEOPLE LIVING WITH & VULNERABLE TO HIV BY REJECTING CUTS & PROVIDING FUNDS TO MEET URGENT HEALTH CARE NEEDS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – MONDAY, APRIL 6 – The Save HIV Funding Campaign is responding to President Trump’s FY27 budget request to Congress, released last Friday, which fails to meet the moment on HIV and other critical health issues.

The President’s budget request turns its back on a rapidly unfolding crisis of shortfalls for HIV programs nationwide, including state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs. It ignores and undercuts the potential promise of recent innovations in HIV prevention for people vulnerable to HIV at home and abroad. Last year, members of Congress rightfully listened to their constituents and HIV community stakeholders and rejected the President’s FY26 budget request that made similar demands, instead providing bipartisan support to maintain HIV programs in FY2026.  The Save HIV Funding campaign urges Congress to reject the President’s budget proposal once again and instead embrace the urgent need to increase resources to fully fund HIV programs and protect thousands of individuals, families, and communities nationwide who are unable to afford access to effective HIV care without these lifesaving federal resources. 

The President’s budget request is a moral document that fails to support basic health needs and the affordability of care. Across the country, individuals, localities, and clinics are grappling with the dire impacts of the Administration and Congressional Majority slashing Medicaid and ending tax subsidies that helped millions of Americans pay for their insurance. A March poll found that 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. had experienced at least one daily life trade-off in the past year to pay for healthcare expenses – including extending current prescriptions, skipping meals, and driving less. The HIV community is experiencing these same pressures as tens of thousands of people living with HIV fight to stay on lifesaving treatment. Federal HIV programs require a funding increase to counter these pressures and ensure that people can access the care they need.

Additional resources also are needed to bolster the nation’s HIV prevention response. As the opportunity to effectively deploy long-acting injectable PrEP languishes and the Centers for Disease Control struggles to meet basic HIV reporting and testing needs because of understaffing, the FY27 President’s budget request calls for nearly $800M in cuts to effective and cost-effective HIV prevention programs. Without these resources, many more generations of people will live with HIV – a far cry from the first Trump Administration that called for ending HIV in the U.S. by 2030.

At a time when more than half of American voters report that housing in unaffordable, the administration is calling once again for the elimination of HOPWA, a critical housing program for people living with HIV/AIDS. And as nations around the globe actively recruit America’s brightest scientists who have become disillusioned by the chaotic disruptions within the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, the Administration proposes a $5 billion cut to NIH, using politicized and stigmatizing language targeting transgender people, communities of color, and LGBTQ populations it its justification to turn away from science. 

This budget request fails America, and its proposals would force our communities to pay a steep price. As President Trump chooses warfare over healthcare with an FY27 budget proposal that would award the Pentagon historic funding levels, Congress must once again reject this cruel and out-of-touch request and instead use its power to appropriate for the people – especially to meet their mounting healthcare needs, including the needs of millions of Americans impacted by HIV.