President Donald Trump is proposing big cuts to biomedical research as part of a budget to reduce discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services by 23 percent — a move likely to provoke outcry from lawmakers, research groups, drugmakers and patients.

The proposal would cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health — which conduct and fund medical research — by $5.8 billion, or about 18 percent from 2017 levels. The Office of Management and Budget called the change "a major reorganization of NIH's institutes and centers to help focus resources on the highest priority research and training activities."

In total, the Trump administration is requesting $65.1 billion for HHS for the 2018 fiscal year, according to an OMB document, down from $84.6 billion in 2016. While budgets serve as a statement of an administration's priorities, actual funding is set by Congress — which often ignores many presidential proposals. That's likely to be the fate of the NIH cuts.