One concrete example is the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Research shows the lifeline has helped reduce youth suicide, a sign that policy choices can produce measurable public-health gains. Yet the lifeline also faces limits tied to the broader budget struggle. When funding mechanisms are unclear or delayed, programs can lose momentum, staff, and public trust even when evidence shows they work.
Understanding how budget rules, oversight, and political pressure intersect helps explain why seemingly dry debates translate into human consequences. Read the full conversation to explore how these dynamics influence the future of health services and what they reveal about protecting access and equity as public programs evolve.
Julie Rovner, KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent and host of the What the Health? podcast, recently spoke with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) about the ongoing fight between President Donald Trump and Congress over control of federal spending.
Baldwin, who is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said lawmakers have been forced to take unprecedented action to ensure the Trump administration properly spends taxpayer dollars.
“In this most recently passed bill that Donald Trump signed into law, we had to put guardrails that we’ve never had to put into our appropriations laws before to enforce our spending bills,” Baldwin said. “And those laws have made it clear that we expect that they must spend what we have appropriated, and not just all of it at the end of the fiscal year, but in a timely manner throughout the year.”
The conversation also addressed the success — and Trump-imposed limitations — of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The resource, which was created through a bipartisan effort, has led to a notable reduction in youth suicide, according to research published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“It’s heartwarming to know that this work matters,” Baldwin said.
This interview aired May 14 on Episode No. 446 of What the Health? From KFF Health News: “In Search of a New FDA Commissioner.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast-interview-senator-tammy-baldwin-taxpayer-dollars-988/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org”>KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150" style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
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