Congress sends $9B spending cuts package to Trump’s desk after late-night House vote
House Speaker Mike Johnson secures victory as GOP uses rare fiscal tool to block USAID and public broadcasting funds
Congress is officially sending a package detailing $9 billion in spending cuts to President Donald Trump’s desk, minutes after midnight on Friday.
The bill, called a “rescissions package,” was approved by the House of Representatives in a late-night 216 to 213 vote after intense debate between Republicans and Democrats. Just two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, voted in opposition.
Friday was also the deadline for passing the legislation, otherwise the White House would be forced to re-obligate those funds as planned.
Imagine Democrats giving illegals billions of dollars. They are living in first class hotels. Many of them are raping your children, robbing you, murdering your loved ones. That is the Democrat party, a party of socialism, anarchy and chaos. But there are always Republicans who vote the Libtard Way, they are Murkowski, Collins and McConnell; a garbage can of trash.
GOODBYE PBS, GOODBYE USAID – WE CRY FOR YOU
THE LATEST: ‘Long overdue’: Senate Republicans ram through Trump’s clawback package with cuts to foreign aid, NPR
Two Senate Republicans join all Democrats to vote against cuts to ‘woke’ foreign aid and public broadcasting funding
Senate Republicans blasted through Democratic and internal opposition to pass President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar clawback package early Thursday morning.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that it was a mission shared by the GOP and Trump, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) identified many of the cuts included in the package.
“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending,” Thune said. “And 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.”
The president’s rescissions package proposed cutting just shy of $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.
Unlike the previous procedural votes, Vice President JD Vance was not needed to break a tie. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted against the preceding procedural votes to advance the package on Tuesday night, but ultimately backed the bill. sEE BELOW
The final vote tally was 51-48, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining every Democrat in voting against it. The package will now be sent to the House, which has until Friday to pass it.
The $9 billion rescissions bill tees up cuts to “woke” spending on foreign aid programs and NPR and PBS that Congress previously approved. Republicans have pitched the bill as building on their quest to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
Trump’s smaller, $9 billion package passed with nearly all Senate Republicans, while all Senate Democrats voted against it. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., were the only Republicans to vote against the bill.
Once debate has wrapped up on the bill, lawmakers will go through another vote-a-rama, where an unlimited number of amendments can be offered for the bill by either side of the aisle. Democrats will likely try to sideline or derail the package, while the GOP is expected to offer an amendment that would spare about $400 million in international HIV and AIDS funding from the chopping block.
The carveout for the Bush-era President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was agreed to ahead of the vote and is backed by the White House. Trimming funding from the program rattled some Senate Republicans, who publicly and privately warned they may not support the bill unless a fix was found.
However, slashing the funding cut from the package could prove a tricky sell to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has called on Senate Republicans to not change the bill.