June 17, 2025 Advocacy Alert

Tell Congress to Protect Funding for OAA and Other Key Programs 

June 17, 2025

Snapshot
(A 30-second read for busy people)

• Last month, the Trump Administration released the HHS budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026, which proposes to cut or eliminate several programs that support older adults’ health and safety.
• Take Action Now: Congress will begin negotiations on FY 2026 OAA funding in the coming weeks and now is the time to tell your lawmakers to reject any cuts to OAA or other aging programs. Visit our FY 2026 appropriations campaign page to access customizable template letters to get started!

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Last month, the Trump Administration released more details on the FY 2026 HHS budget. It contained some good news, including the Administration’s decision to move all of HHS’s OAA programs and many other aging and disability programs to a newly renamed Administration for Children, Families and Communities (ACFC), rather than to CMS. However, the President’s budget also includes eliminating several key federal programs that the Aging Network taps to support the health, safety and independence of older adults, including the Prevention and Public Health Fund (falls prevention, Alzheimer’s and other ACL grants), the Community Services Block Grant, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and others.
 
For more information, USAging members can review our June 3 Legislative Update. Everyone can learn more in USAging’s June 17 letter to House and Senate Appropriations Committees and our appropriations chart.
 
We need you to contact your Representative and Senators and urge them to protect OAA and other critical programs in Congress’s spending bills. To better meet the needs of older adults across the country, USAging’s FY 2026 appropriations requests are to protect and increase funding for all OAA programs, but particularly for Title III B Home and Community-Based Supportive Services, Title VI Grants for Native American Aging Programs, Part A (nutrition and supportive services) and Part C (family caregiver support) and the Title III E National Family Caregiver Support Program.
 
The House Appropriations Labor–HHS Subcommittee is scheduled for a markup on Monday, July 21 (Day 2 of USAging’s Annual Conference and Tradeshow), so the next five weeks will be critical for advocacy. You can use our template letters below to get started!

Take Action Now!

Contact your lawmakers today on appropriations, even if you wrote to them back in April, when USAging first kicked off our annual appropriations campaign. Now that the President's budget is public, we need you to weigh in with Congress quickly and push back against the proposed eliminations and reinforce the need to protect OAA and other key programs!
 
Use our newly updated templates to customize your asks to reflect your agency/program: AAA template, Title VI template. Give your Members of Congress a sense of how their communities are affected—take the time to localize what this funding means for the older adults and caregivers in your community, tribe or state.
 
STEP 1: Put your requests in writing! Use our customizable templates (AAA and Title VI) to send a letter to your lawmakers. You can find the contact information on your Members’ websites: house.gov and senate.gov.
 
STEP 2: Make your support for OAA funding public. Find out if any of your agency’s stakeholders know the Members of Congress serving your community or if they will be seeing them at any virtual or in-person events. If so, ask that they put in a good word for OAA funding and its impact in your community.
 
STEP 3: Engage your provider network. Urge your vendors/providers, advisory board members and other important stakeholders to send their own letters to Congress. Please do all you can to amplify the message and engage others who understand the value of OAA in their communities! Forward this Alert to your networks or edit it to be best received by your agency’s advocates.

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If you have questions or concerns about this Advocacy Alert or USAging’s policy positions, please contact the USAging Policy Team, Amy Gotwals, Olivia Umoren and Seth Ickes at policy@usaging.org.