Congress finally gets Trump's request to codify DOGE cuts to NPR, PBS, foreign aid

Yahoo

2 days ago

President Donald Trump has sent Congress a request to nix $9.4 billion in current funding for public broadcasting, National Public Radio and foreign aid — the first test of Republicans' willingness to back the administration's gutting of federal agencies.
The 'rescissions' memo was officially transmitted Tuesday to Capitol Hill, according to Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), but it has yet to be publicly released. The request now starts a 45-day clock — not counting breaks longer than three days — for Congress to either approve or rebuff Trump's request to claw back funding that's supposed to be flowing now.
While GOP leaders in the House hope to swiftly pass the package next week, it faces longer odds in the Senate, where Trump's previous request to revoke $15 billion was defeated in 2018.
Trump's memo is landing amid rising strife between Republicans on Capitol Hill and those at the White House over Congress' funding power, as the administration continues to cancel, freeze and shift federal cash that lawmakers already approved, while also fighting off lawsuits in courtrooms throughout the country. If Congress approves the rescissions request, it would codify a small slice of the funding cuts Elon Musk dictated atop the Department of Government Efficiency in recent months, before the billionaire entrepreneur left his DOGE leadership role last week.
Collins, who has been publicly critical of Trump's funding moves, said Tuesday that the request appears to target funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The senator said she would not support cutting that program, touting it as an initiative that has "saved literally millions of lives, and has been extremely effective.'
Already, Collins has been talking to the Senate parliamentarian about the rules of modifying the president's rescissions request, since Congress hasn't approved such a package in well over two decades.
'It's extremely complex in the rules, because there hasn't been a successful rescission package in many, many years,' Collins said, noting that lawmakers aren't allowed to claw back funding from an account that isn't already targeted in the president's memo.
Senate Republicans can approve Trump's request at a simple-majority bar without having to worry about clearing the filibuster threshold.
Over in the House, fiscal hawks are pressuring Speaker Mike Johnson to call a vote this week on the rescissions package, after the chamber's top Republican appropriators have for weeks been negotiating with the White House over what the request will contain.
'While the Swamp will inevitably attempt to slow and kill these cuts, there is no excuse for a Republican House not to advance the first DOGE rescissions package the same week it is presented to Congress then quickly send it for passage in the Republican Senate so President Trump can sign it into law,' the House Freedom Caucus posted on social media.
A vote to approve the package is expected next week, however, since House GOP leaders like to abide by the rule that lawmakers should have three full days to review a bill before voting. Johnson said in an interview Tuesday that his goal is 'to move it as quickly as our rules allow us.'
Democrats are expected to unanimously oppose the rescissions package, and Democratic appropriators are especially dejected about the prospect of Republican lawmakers voting to retract the federal cash Congress already approved.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the panel that funds the Pentagon, said 'there's no reason for us to be here' if Republicans are going to approve Trump's request after already enacting a lengthy funding patch — while also unilaterally increasing budgets for the military and border security in the GOP's party-line megabill.
'If we, as appropriators, allow the majority to pass a full-year CR, reconciliation and rescission, why are we here?' Coons said.
Even as the White House delivers the request for clawbacks after months of begging from Republican lawmakers, top Trump administration officials are threatening to undermine Congress' other funding prerogatives this fall.
In sending the rescissions request, the White House is using the main tool created under the decades-old 'impoundment' law enacted in 1974 to stop presidents from withholding federal dollars lawmakers approve while exercising their constitutional 'power of the purse.' At the same time, Trump administration officials continue to argue that the impoundment law is unconstitutional — and publicly telegraph their plans to pull back funding regardless of Congress' instructions.
White House budget director Russ Vought said on CNN this week that the Trump administration 'may not actually have to get a Congress to pass the rescissions bill' to block some funding.
'We have executive tools,' he added. 'We have impoundment that 200 years of presidents had the ability — and the recognition that they had the ability — to spend less than the ceiling.'
Over the last week, Vought has ramped up this rhetoric, repeatedly talking about using a controversial tactic known as a 'pocket recission' to defy Congress' funding directives. Using such a maneuver later this summer, he contends, would let the White House make all of the DOGE cuts permanent, regardless of support or disapproval from Congress.
To do that, the Trump administration would have to send additional recissions requests in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which runs through September. Even if lawmakers vote to approve or reject the requests, the White House could let the funding expire by withholding it through Sept. 30.
Vought said this week that the White House could use the maneuver 'later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed.' The tactic has been 'rarely used,' he acknowledged, but added, 'we intend to use all of these tools.'
Ben Jacobs contributed to this report.