A bipartisan spending package would modestly increase 2026 funding for HHS, including targeted gains for NIH and CDC programs, as lawmakers move to avert a government shutdown after a year of proposed cuts and operational disruption.
Earlier this week, US Congress unveiled a massive funding package affecting the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ahead of the January 30 government shutdown deadline.1
This latest government action impacting the research space would allocate $116.8 billion in 2026 funding to the HHS—an increase of $210 million from 2025. Within the HHS, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive $48.7 billion, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would be budgeted $9.2 billion.2
In addition to impacting the HHS, the bipartisan bill also presented several measures aimed at the operation of pharmacy benefit managers.
Under the NIH’s $48.7 billion proposal, $415 million above FY 2025:
The CDC’s proposed 2026 budget includes:
Medical research has been the target of heavy funding cuts since President Donald J. Trump took office in 2025. One of the administration’s largest proposed
The proposal also aimed to consolidate the NIH from 27 centers and institutes at the start of 2025, down to just five.
The newly proposed funding package by both congressional parties on January 20 may help the US government avoid yet another shutdown. Last October, the NIH was forced to roll out a contingency staffing plan that impacted funding in light of the last federal shutdown.
The agency stated that it would retain 4,477 (24.5%) of its staff during the shutdown to maintain operations. Another staffing plan released at the time revealed that 32,460 employees across the HHS would be furloughed during the shutdown.
While it remains to be seen what the rest of 2026 holds for medical research funding, 2025 was filled with challenges. In a
“Overhead in academic research supported by the NIH supports intramural research, those research initiatives that are being funded by the universities themselves, that often provide the seeding of what future research we want to go after, those are often the higher risk, smaller things to go after,” Lipset said. “Overhead supports our shared infrastructure, our labs, our technical equipment, and other shared resources that you couldn't put as a line item into just one direct budget, one set of direct costs for a grant, so there's tremendous consequences.”
1. Sahil Kapur, Kyle Stewart and Scott Wong. Congress releases massive funding bill ahead of shutdown deadline as ICE clash looms. NBC News. January 20, 2026. Accessed January 22, 2026.
2. Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies: Summary of Fiscal Year 2026 Bill. Accessed January 22, 2026.
3. NIH Implements Contingency Plan as Government Shutdown Impacts Research Funding. Applied Clinical Trials. October 7, 2025. Accessed January 22, 2026.
