Trump’s $9.4B Rescissions Package Facing Deadline in Senate

The Senate this week is considering whether to pass President Donald Trump’s rescissions package of $9.4 billion in federal funding, with a deadline looming in less than 10 days.

The White House has proposed a $1.1 billion reduction to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and a $8.3 billion reduction to foreign-aid spending. The CPB funds National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, which have long been criticized by conservatives for perceived left-wing bias. 

The rescissions package, which has already passed the House of Representatives, would cut only federal programs that the White House says are wasteful or go to causes not aligned with the America’s national interest.

Even so, the reductions, which can be passed through the Senate with just a simple majority, are facing headwinds from some Republicans.

Some senators would like to see changes to the domestic spending cuts by protecting public radio stations that service Native American reservations and in rural Alaska.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in particular, has voiced concerns over the package’s cuts to U.S. foreign aid. 

“I have already made clear I don’t support the cuts to PEPFAR and child and maternal health,” Collins said Tuesday night. 

PEPFAR, short for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest health program for combatting HIV/AIDS in the world. It costs American taxpayers more than $6 billion per year to fund. The U.S. has spent about $110 billion on the program since its beginning in 2003, saving an estimated 26 million lives.

Collins’ opposition comes at a time when foreign-aid programs and organizations have been heavily criticized by both the Trump administration and other congressional Republicans as wasteful and supportive of left-wing priorities abroad.

“[Former President Joe] Biden made it clear with guidance that was beyond a doubt that he wanted the [nongovernmental organizations], the recipients of U.S. funds, to aggressively push the sexual reproductive health and rights, the abortion issue, and other woke agendas,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus told The Daily Signal in February. 

The New Jersey congressman added, “I think we see the consortium of all these NGOs in these countries … integrating [sexual and reproductive health and rights] into everything they do.”

Smith’s concerns over foreign-aid malfeasance were later vindicated when PEPFAR money was illegally used to perform 21 abortions in Mozambique.

Max Primorac, a former chief operating officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, characterized many of the staff at the agency and the State Department as committed to left-wing causes.

“You had a one-sided uniparty apparatus here [in the State Department and USAID] funding only one side of the political equation,” Primorac said in an interview earlier this year with “The Signal Sitdown” podcast.

Republican proponents of the rescissions have characterize them as reducing bad governance. 

“What this package does cut is numerous instances of egregious examples of blatant government waste and abuse,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said when he testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee two weeks ago. 

“[J]ust to name a few: $35 million to address vasectomy messaging frameworks and gender dynamics in Ethiopia; $3 million for Iraqi [version of] ‘Sesame Street’; half-a-million dollars for electric buses in Rwanda; $800,000 for transgender people, sex workers, and their clients and sexual networks in Nepal,” the Missouri senator noted. 

Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which assists the president with his funding objectives, concurred.

“Most Americans would be shocked and appalled to learn that their tax dollars—money they thought was going to medical care—was actually going to far-left activism, population control, and sex workers,” Vought explained.

The deadline to pass the rescissions before they expire is July 18.

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