WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate early on Thursday approved President Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.
The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favor of Trump’s request to cut $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress.
Most of the cuts are to programs to assist foreign countries suffering from disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates all $1.1 billion the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.
Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as suffering from anti-right bias.
Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But Trump’s Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting his policies since he began his second term in January.
The $9 billion at stake is extremely small in the context of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, and represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
As of mid-June, Trump was blocking $425 billion in funding that had already been appropriated and previously approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.
However, Trump and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.
The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation without altering Trump’s request by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.
But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programs, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that PEPFAR, a global program to fight HIV/AIDS launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, was being exempted.
The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9 billion from $9.4 billion, requiring another House vote before the measure can be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law.
The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House will be required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.
REPUBLICAN ‘NO’ VOTES
Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – joined Democrats in voting against the legislation.
“You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Murkowski said in a Senate speech.
She said the Trump administration also had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Most of all, Murkowski said, Congress must assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity.”
Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans earlier this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3 trillion to the nation’s $36.2 trillion debt.
Democrats charged Republicans with giving up Congress’ Constitutionally-mandated control of federal spending.
“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said.
“Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later,” Schumer said.
The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut now could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by September 30 to avoid a shutdown.
Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate, but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Bo Erickson; Editing by David Gregorio, Humeyra Pamuk, Michael Perry and Saad Sayeed)
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