GOP narrowly advances rescissions package to Senate floor

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans eked out just enough votes Tuesday to clear the first procedural hurdle to floor consideration of proposal to claw back billions in previously appropriated foreign aid and public broadcasting funding, teeing up an expected vote-a-rama on amendments to the bill Wednesday.

The Senate agreed, 51-50, to a procedural motion to discharge the measure from committee consideration and send it to the floor. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.

The chamber followed quickly by voting to proceed to the measure on another tie-breaker vote, which triggered up to 10 hours of debate followed by a potential “vote-a-rama” on amendments. The chamber quickly voted to proceed to the measure on another tie-breaker vote, triggering up to 10 hours of debate under the rules, followed by a “vote-a-rama” on amendments.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., announced after the votes Tuesday night that an agreement had been reached to end debate on the measure at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, after which votes would ensue.

Moderate Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both senior appropriators, crossed party lines to vote against the procedural motions, as did Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader who has been a major proponent of foreign aid.

Earlier in the day, the White House agreed to a Republican request to strip out a $400 million rescission from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, otherwise known as PEPFAR, a well-regarded anti-HIV program. That change would reduce the size of the package from $9.4 billion to $9 billion.

Thune late Tuesday called up the substitute amendment that would preserve the PEPFAR funds, among other changes, making that the pending business.

Collins, the Appropriations panel chair, said removing the PEPFAR cuts was a positive step. But she still had problems with a lack of information from the White House budget office on how other cuts in the package would be implemented.

“The rescissions package has a big problem — nobody really knows what program reductions are in it,” Collins said. “That isn’t because we haven’t had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that [the Office of Management and Budget] has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process.”

The myriad foreign aid funding cancellations in the package include $2.5 billion in development assistance used for activities like improving agriculture practices and water and sanitation; $1 billion to the United Nations system; and $460 million in funding to support former Soviet states that are vulnerable to malign influences from Russia and China.

Other tweaks in the substitute amendment include:

• Language stipulating that none of a separate $500 million cut to global health programs would impact funds devoted to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, nutrition or material and child health.

• A prohibition on cutting into aid for Jordan, Egypt or a fund set up to counter Chinese government influence as part of a $1.65 billion rescission of economic support funds.

• Protecting funds for Feed the Future Innovation Labs, an Obama administration agricultural initiative, Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, as well as the “Countering PRC Influence Fund,” from any of the $2.5 billion in cuts to development assistance. Farm-state Republicans had raised concerns about potential cuts to overseas food aid.

Tribal broadcasts deal

The White House captured another pivotal GOP vote on Tuesday when it agreed to a request by Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota to find extra money for tribal broadcasts that are used to transmit emergency alerts in his state.

Rounds announced on social media that he would support the rescissions bill after Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought agreed to provide an unspecified amount to mitigate the impact on Native American reservations from the cancellation of $1.1 billion in advance fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027 appropriations for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

But the commitment from the administration also elicited a fresh round of criticism from Democrats.

“Mike Rounds got his deal so that his tribes will be taken care of, and I’m glad for him. But there are 49 other states where your emergency communications infrastructure is about to be defunded,” Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the lead Democrat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said in Tuesday floor remarks.

Schatz, also the ranking member on the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee, accused Republicans of turning their back on core First Amendment principles around freedom of speech and freedom of the press by voting to cancel longstanding taxpayer support for U.S. public media over perceived anti-conservative bias.

“Some people are pissed off about NPR’s coverage or PBS’s coverage. Come on! You defund an agency because you disagree with their editorial choices? Which country is this?” he said.

Democrats have been scathing in their opposition to the bill, and warned their GOP colleagues they were inviting a potentially unending line of rescissions packages from Vought that will eat up floor time and encourage more open-ended vote-a-ramas.

While not as critical as Schatz and other Democrats, Murkowski was clearly frustrated when she spoke to reporters about how much power Congress is ceding to the executive branch, rather than working on legislation from lawmakers.

“I always care about not only the Appropriations Committee but all of the committees,” Murkowski said. “I wish that they all functioned a little better around here. I’d like to do some legislating, what a crazy thing.”

The myriad of foreign aid funding cancellations in the package include $2.5 billion in development assistance used for activities like improving agriculture practices and water and sanitation; $1 billion to the United Nations system; and $460 million in funding to support former Soviet states that are vulnerable to malign influences from Russia and China.

If the legislation is amended, it must go back to the House to be cleared before it can be sent to the president’s desk. Congress is facing a deadline of midnight on Friday to advance the measure under the terms spelled out by a 1974 budget control law.

If Congress approves the administration’s rescissions request, it would mark the first completed presidential rescissions proposal under the 1974 law establishing the process since fiscal 1999, and the largest in more than four decades, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.