The House Delivers: Trump’s $9B Cut To Global Aid And Public Broadcasting Gets Final Approval

The GOP-led House sent a $9 billion rescissions package to President Donald Trump’s desk just after midnight on Friday, a victory for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) drive to defund programs that many Republicans deem wasteful and ideologically driven.

Lawmakers in the lower chamber voted 216-213, largely along party lines, in favor of the rescissions measure, which claws back funds allocated to foreign aid projects and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a funding source for NPR and PBS.

“President Trump and House Republicans promised fiscal responsibility and government efficiency. Today, we’re once again delivering on that promise,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said. “This package eliminates $9 billion in unnecessary and wasteful spending at the State Department, USAID, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

He added, “The American people will no longer be forced to fund politically biased media and more than $8 billion in outrageous expenses overseas. While Republicans continue to deliver real accountability, restore fiscal discipline, and protect taxpayer dollars, Democrats continue to defend waste, fraud, and abuse. This isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. We look forward to passing additional rescissions bills throughout the 119th Congress.”

Previously, the House passed a $9.4 billion rescissions package in line with the White House’s request in early June. However, the GOP-led Senate pulled $400 million in cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program as some members had voiced dismay with that part of the proposal.

Under the Impoundment Control Act, any rescissions measure requires only a simple majority in the House and Senate, meaning the filibuster threshold could be ignored. But it also gave Congress just 45 days to deliver legislation in response to a president’s request. The deadline, in this case, was the end of the day on Friday.

A continuation of the spending reductions is possible if they make it into fiscal 2026 legislation that is being put together now. Sources on Capitol Hill and the White House previously said they expected more requests from the Trump administration to implement so-called DOGE cuts as part of a wider effort to reduce the deficit, which has ballooned past a trillion dollars in recent years, so long as the first bill passed.

Critics of the rescissions package raised concerns about how defunding public broadcasting could diminish helpful services to Americans, lamented a lack of clarity on the Trump administration’s plan to implement the cuts, and decried the prospect of cutting back on food and medicine for people in poor countries.

“Instead of protecting the health, safety and well-being of the American people, House Republicans have once again rubber stamped Donald Trump’s extreme, reckless rescissions legislation,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and other Democrat leaders in the House said in a joint statement.

Upon announcing its request, the White House’s budget office said that it wanted to claw back funds steeped in “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the CPB, which Trump singled out in an executive order seeking to defund NPR and PBS amid claims they were biased, as well as money for foreign aid programs.

Johnson’s office said the final product “rescinds $9 billion of wasteful spending uncovered by DOGE,” including: $1.1 billion for the CPB, $135 million in contributions to the corrupt and dangerous World Health Organization, $18 million to improve gender diversity in Mexican street lighting, $4.4 million for a Melanesian Youth Climate Corps, $3.9 million for LGBTQI+ advocacy programs in the Western Balkans, $2.5 million to teach children how to make environmentally friendly “reproductive health” decisions, $300,000 to fund a Pride parade in Lesotho, $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda, $500,000 for a gender equality and empowerment hub, and $8,000 for promoting vegan food in Zambia.

Trump had warned GOP lawmakers that there would be political consequences for opposing the rescissions effort, particularly when it came to PBS and NPR. Among the Senate Republicans voted against the measure with the Democrats and independents were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. The GOP lawmakers in the House who voted against it, via the rule, were Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

In an early Friday morning post on Truth Social, Trump exclaimed in all caps, “HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED. REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”