Politics
BREAKING: Senate Delivers Huge Win For Trump
The U.S. Senate delivered another significant victory to President Donald Trump Wednesday night, voting to pass legislation aimed squarely at reducing government spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting.
The rescission bill, passed on a 51-48 vote, sends U.S. House lawmakers austerity measures that remove virtually all government subsidies for PBS and NPR, longtime targets for Republicans who have accused both stations of left-wing partisanship. Executives at the stations had ramped up their public appeals against the bill in recent days, including by sending out fundraising emails to listeners encouraging them to help fill the $1.1 billion gap.
Without those funds, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has funded both networks since its establishment in the 1960s, will become a shell of itself, fulfilling one of Trump’s cornerstone campaign promises.
Another $8 billion in foreign aid will be clawed back by the bill, though a $400 million line item for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, was kept intact to win the votes of wary Republicans. Only GOP Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) ultimately voted with all Democrats in opposition.
“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said in a speech ahead of the vote. “Now it’s time for the Senate to do its part to cut some of that waste out of the budget. It’s a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”
Other senators who voted for the bill held out hope that the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, will clarify which foreign aid programs it plans to reduce in the months ahead.
“If we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds — that advisers to the president decide they are going to cut anyway,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is retiring, said, “then there will be a reckoning for that.”
Other foreign assistance initiatives shielded from the cuts include aid to Jordan and Egypt; Food for Peace, a program that provides food assistance to other countries; and some global health programs, the NYT reports.
Democrats, incensed by the bill’s passage, warned that the fiscal fight may come back to haunt Republicans as both parties negotiate over another government shutdown bill in September.
“We have never, never before seen bipartisan investments slashed through a partisan rescissions package,” Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. “Do not start now. Not when we are working, at this very moment, in a bipartisan way to pass our spending bills. Bipartisanship doesn’t end with any one line being crossed; it erodes. It breaks down bit by bit, until one day there is nothing left.”
The bill now heads to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) maintains he has the votes to quickly pass it, sending the legislation to President Trump’s desk for his signature. The House briefly fell into chaos on Wednesday as competing GOP factions wrangled over provisions in cryptocurrency legislation supported by the administration.