HHS Illegally Withheld $78M for Health-Care Research

The Government Accountability Office concluded that the Health and Human Services Department violated the law when it didn’t spend $78 million that Congress appropriated for improving the country’s health-care system.

GAO, in a decision released Wednesday, found that HHS violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 when it didn’t obligate money that lawmakers appropriated for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s research programs in fiscal year 2025. AHRQ traditionally awards grants to university researchers to study how to improve health care and to train new scientists and clinicians.

“The agency, without submitting a special message to Congress, withheld funds from obligation and expenditure following the [reduction in force, or layoff] of AHRQ personnel responsible for grant administration,” GAO wrote in its summary.

The government watchdog added that “an agency does not have the discretion to withhold funds from obligation or expenditure altogether simply because they were appropriated as part of a lump-sum appropriation. Rather, the agency must prudently obligate or expend those funds for another permissible purpose under the lump-sum.”

A GAO spokesperson said in an email that “if an agency does not release improperly withheld budget authority for obligation, the Comptroller General may bring a civil action” to compel obligation.

AcademyHealth, which represents health-services and health-policy researchers, has estimated that AHRQ lost 80 percent of its staff through mass layoffs and subsequent departures, including everyone who worked on its extramural grant program.

“This is ultimately about whether appropriated funds are used the way that Congress directed,” said Aaron Carroll, AcademyHealth’s president and chief executive officer.

“We’re grateful to members of both parties that have pressed for answers, but a finding like this only matters if it leads to action,” Carroll said. “And we hope it strengthens the resolve of Congress—in both parties again—to see that these funds are used as the law requires and this is not allowed to happen again.”

In a news release, Patty Murray, the Washington senator who’s the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, “This decision confirms what we’ve long known: President Trump lit health research funding on fire last year, and it’s clear as day he’s just done the same again this year.”

HHS and AHRQ didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

While GAO’s ruling only concerned unspent fiscal year 2025 funds, Grant Witness, a group tracking federal agency grant funding, reports that AHRQ spent even less on grants during fiscal year 2026, which ended Sept. 30: $41.3 million, compared to $216 million in 2025 and $419 million in 2024.