CDC Funding Cut

February 5, 2007
From The Campaign For Public Health

Now that the details of the President’s fiscal year 2008 (FY08) Budget Request to Congress are available, CPH has analyzed the Administration’s request and updated the CPH budget tracking sheet with the agency’s newly proposed funding levels. We have also added the OMB estimates for the 2007 Joint Resolution to the chart. PDF of the chart.

First, the FY07 Joint Resolution cuts CDC’s core programs from last year’s levels. Further, it provides LESS FUNDING for the core programs of the CDC than either the FY07 House committee-passed or Senate-passed LHHS bills would have provided to the agency – had the Republican leadership been able to pass them in Congress last year. If dollars directed to Influenza preparedness efforts are excluded from the Joint Resolution totals (as they do not reoccur every year), the cut to the CDC’s core programs contained in the JR represents a 1.4 percent reduction in funding from FY06 funding levels. Funding for core programs in the Joint Resolution are a full 5.1 percent below the CDC’s funding levels from FY05.

The Administration’s request to Congress makes matters even worse. In the President’s budget proposal, core programs drop to $5.824 billion from a high water mark of $6.321 billion in FY05. This represents a cut to CDC’s core programs of 7.9 percent from FY05. The FY08 request to Congress is half a billion dollars below CDC’s FY05 funding levels.

Details found in the tracking chart include –

• If Influenza funding is excluded, core funding in FY07 is $6.001 billion in the JR. By comparison, the House had proposed $6.153 billion and the Senate $6.076 billion for the same year.
• Since 2005 (again, excluding Influenza funding), core CDC programs have dropped from $6.321 billion in FY05, to $6.088 billion in FY06, to $6.001 billion in the FY07 Joint Resolution and now to $5.824 billion in the President’s FY08 request to Congress.

None of these numbers account for the impact inflation is having on these totals.

One aspect of the FY07 Joint Resolution is more positive:

• The State Department program, The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is likely to provide CDC with some additional funding (not shown in the Campaign’s chart of CDC’s ongoing funding streams).

The Campaign for Public Health’s letter to Congress calling for greater support for this critical agency will be posted to our site in the next few days.