06/03/2025
📢 The National Respite Coalition (NRC) has some great news to kick off your weekend! Because of your calls, letters and emails to Members of Congress in response to the NRC's alerts, and the advocacy of many disability, aging and caregiver advocacy groups working in coalition, the President's full budget proposal, which was released today, recommends continuation of the Lifespan Respite Care Program with no cuts! In addition, the final President’s budget does not include ANY funding cuts to Older Americans Act Programs, including the National Family Caregiver Support Program, Aging and Disability Resource Centers or Adult Protective Services.
Also, rather than splitting up the aging and disability programs administered by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), and reassigning them to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Administration for Children and Families, as previously reported in a leaked White House OMB budget document, these programs will now be housed together in a new Administration for Children, Families, and Communities.
Unfortunately, the budget does recommend elimination of other critical programs, including Chronic Disease Self-Management Education, University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, Limb Loss Resource, Paralysis Resource Center, Voting Access for People with Disabilities, the White House Conference on Aging, and others. This is not acceptable!
The fight is not over!! We still have our work cut out for us. Congress holds the purse strings and only Congress can make final decisions about FY 2026 funding levels for all of these programs. Today we celebrate, but tomorrow we get back to work. The unrelenting advocacy must continue to ensure funding for these vital programs in FY 2026 and to oppose Medicaid and SNAP cuts in the ominous House Budget Reconciliation bill! Thank you all for what has been accomplished so far!
For more information, see the Fiscal Year FY 2026 Budget in Brief from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services athttps://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/fy-2026-budget-in-brief.pdf
