6 days ago
Trump demands Congress back DOGE's $9.4 billion cuts to USAID and PBS
The White House plans to ask Congress this week to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved funding to foreign aid and public media outlets, as the administration seeks to make permanent some of the cuts and priorities of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
The package includes $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid efforts ranging from climate work to LGBT programs, as well as $1.1 billion clawed back from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds NPR and PBS, an administration official told The Independent.
Republican lawmakers have expressed mixed feelings about the clawback package.
'The House is eager and ready to act on DOGE's findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand,' House Speaker Mike Johnson said last week on X, promising the cuts would end USAID's 'insane spending.'
The proposal, expected to be submitted as early as Tuesday, would have 45 days to pass.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Appropriations Committee, has said she's unsure that'll be enough time.
'It's extremely complex and the rules, because there hasn't been a successful rescission package in many, many years,' she told NBC News.
The Independent has contacted PBS and NPR for comment.
'We want to see the rescission order before we comment on it,' a spokesperson for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting told The Independent.
The broadcasters have already signaled they'll push back on Trump's wider attempts to defund them, though.
PBS and NPR are already suing Trump, after the president signed an executive order in May calling on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding the broadcasters.
The latter is also suing Trump over an attempt to remove its board members. During its lawsuit, the corporation stated that the administration attempted to assign a DOGE team to the organization. However, the outfit denied the request, arguing that federal law states the organization 'will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government.'
Many of the foreign aid programs on the chopping block are associated with another DOGE target, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration shuttered in March, moving its remaining operations to the wider State Department.
The cuts to USAID, part of larger disruptions to U.S. HIV/AIDS-prevention programs, have been linked to thousands of deaths.
The rescission plan is separate from the administration's so-called 'Big, Beautiful Bill' of proposed domestic spending, which passed the House last month.
The outgoing Musk has criticized that bill for not doing more to reduce government spending.
"I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn't decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk told CBS News as he was departing.
"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," he went on. "But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion."
