Congress appropriated $41.5 million this fiscal year for the CDC to run its two main public health programs for Alzheimer's and dementia. The federal employees who administered those programs were cut or placed on leave during the agency's restructuring, and the money now goes to state and local recipients without the agency staff who once guided how it was used.
That combination, money without people, is the part of the federal health workforce story that has been hardest to see. Layoffs generate headlines. A funded program that quietly stops functioning does not, because on paper it still exists.
