Latest news with #SenateRepublicans
Wall Street Journal
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Trump Trashes Another Beltway Norm, Thank Goodness
Democrats with little interest in protecting all the rights enumerated in our Constitution nevertheless like to present Donald Trump's rejection of political norms as grave threats to our republic. What's harder to understand is why some Senate Republicans have now joined the criticism of a welcome break with recent fiscal tradition. The basic Democratic playbook in this era is to treat any diminution of Washington bureaucracy as an attack on constitutional governance. Of course most of the time the opposite is true. As rule by bureaucrat recedes, a citizen's liberty expands. In any case, a recent Journal report from Ken Thomas, Lindsay Wise and Jasmine Li quoted the top donkey reacting to Congress approving $9 billion in rescissions to the federal budget:
Fox News
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
'All the options': GOP eyes cutting August recess to move dozens of Trump nominees stalled by Dems
Print Close By Alex Miller Published July 21, 2025 Senate Republican leadership is weighing whether to cancel, or shorten, their upcoming August break following President Donald Trump's request to stay in town and finish confirming his outstanding nominees. Over the last six months, the Senate has moved at a breakneck pace to confirm the president's nominees all while facing resistance from Senate Democrats. So far, 96 of Trump's nominees have been confirmed. Still, there are 136 outstanding nominations on the upper chamber's calendar that haven't made it over the finish line. Year in and year out, lawmakers typically escape from the Hill for the entire month of August, either recuperating from months in Washington, D.C., or selling their legislative accomplishments to people back home. CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS FACE BRUISING BATTLE TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN But Trump on Sunday called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to keep lawmakers in town to finish their work on confirming his slew of outstanding nominees. "Hopefully the very talented John Thune, fresh off our many victories over the past two weeks and, indeed, 6 months, will cancel August recess (and long weekends!), in order to get my incredible nominees confirmed," Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. "We need them badly!!! DJT" 'LONG OVERDUE': SENATE REPUBLICANS RAM THROUGH TRUMP'S CLAWBACK PACKAGE WITH CUTS TO FOREIGN AID, NPR Thune said he had spoken with the president about the August recess issue, but did not say whether the entire break would be canceled. A senior GOP aide told Fox News Digital that discussions over shortening the August recess were already happening before Trump's request. "We're thinking about it," Thune said. "We want to get as many noms through the pipeline as we can. And honestly, it'd be nice to have Democrats who actually would kind of act more according to historical precedents when it comes to this." The remaining spots that need to be filled run across nearly every facet of the federal government, including positions in the Defense Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Commerce Department and a slew of ambassadors, among others. 'ONE MORE': SENATE REPUBLICANS EYE TACKLING ANOTHER RECONCILIATION BILL Among the remaining nominees are some familiar faces from the 2024 election and beyond, including Hung Cao, who ran against Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and was nominated as Navy undersecretary; Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to Greece, and former Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., who was nominated to be Federal Transit administrator. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Thune accused Senate Democrats of being obstructionist and noted that so far, not a single nominee has been approved through the fast-track voice vote or unanimous consent processes. Indeed, every nominee has been put to a floor vote. Only Secretary of State Marco Rubio received a near unanimous, 99 to 0, vote. Earlier this year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., supported delaying all the president's nominees who lack unanimous support in the upper chamber, effectively triggering floor votes for each. He also used an arcane Senate procedural move to stall federal prosecutors in committee. "This is something that we're very committed to, and we're going to be looking at all the options in the next few weeks to try and get as many of those across the finish line as we can," Thune said. Print Close URL
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Health
- Bloomberg
RFK Jr. Is Making America Sick Again. Republicans Need a Cure
It's not too late for Senate Republicans to begin correcting the worst mistake they've made this year: confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services. In just a few months, Kennedy has helped bring a pox upon the country — and until Republicans get serious about holding him accountable, more Americans will die, and the president's legacy on health and safety will be badly tarnished. Kennedy, who has no training in medicine or health, has long been the nation's foremost peddler of junk science and the crackpot conspiracy theories that flow from it. The greatest danger in elevating him to HHS secretary was always that he would use his position to undermine public confidence in vaccines, which would lead to needless suffering and even death. And so it has come to pass.
Fox News
5 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Senators push back against Vought's call for more partisan spending process
Senators are not thrilled with a top White House official's comments that the government funding process should become more partisan, and fear that doing so could erode Congress' power of the purse. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told reporters during a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast Thursday morning that he believed "the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan." His sentiment came on the heels of Senate Republicans advancing President Donald Trump's $9 billion clawback package, which would cancel congressionally approved funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, just a few hours before. Unlike the hyper-partisan bills that have dominated the Senate's recent agenda, including the rescissions package and the president's "big, beautiful bill," the appropriations process is typically a bipartisan affair in the upper chamber. That is because, normally, most bills brought to the floor have to pass the Senate's 60-vote threshold, and with the GOP's narrow majority, Senate Democrats will need to pass any spending bills or government funding extensions to ward off a partial government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who alluded to issues down the line with the appropriations process if Republicans advanced Trump's resicssions package, took a harsh stance against Vought. "Donald Trump should fire Russell Vought immediately, before he destroys our democracy and runs the country into the ground," Schumer said. Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee also did not take kindly to Vought's comments. "I think he disrespects it," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. "I think he thinks that we are irrelevant, and I wish I had actually heard the speech, because, you know, again, everything in context." "But you have to admit that when you look at the quotes that are highlighted in the story this morning, it is pretty dismissive of the appropriations process, pretty dismissive," she continued. Vought has no intention of slowing the rescissions train coming from the White House, and said that there would be more rescissions packages on the way. He noted another would "come soon," as lawmakers in the House close in on a vote to send the first clawback package to the president's desk. "There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, 'I'm voting for a bipartisan appropriations process,'" Vought said. "That may be the view of something that appropriators want to maintain." Both Murkowski and Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against the rescissions package, and warned of the cuts to public broadcasting, lack of transparency from the OMB and the possible effect it could have on legislating in the upper chamber. "I disagree with both those statements," Collins said of Vought's push for a more partisan appropriations process. "Just as with the budget that the President submitted, we had to repeatedly ask him and the agencies to provide us with the detailed account information, which amounts to 1000s of pages that our appropriators and their staff meticulously review." Fox News Digital reached out to the OMB for comment. Vought's comments came at roughly the same time as appropriators were holding a mark-up hearing of the military construction and veterans' affairs and Commerce, Justice and Science spending bills. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said during the hearing that Senate Republicans coalescing behind the rescissions package would only make hammering out spending bills more difficult, and argued that "trust" was at the core of the process. "That's part of why bipartisan bills are so important," she said. "But everyone has to understand getting to the finish line always depends on our ability to work together in a bipartisan way, and it also depends on trust." Other Republicans on the panel emphasized a similar point, that, without some kind of cooperation, advancing spending bills would become even more challenging. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said that finding "critical mass" to move spending bills was important, and warned that people have to "quit saying it's gotta just be my way or the highway," following threats Schumer's threats last week that the appropriations process could suffer should the rescissions package pass. "People better start recognizing that we're all gonna have to work together and hopefully get these [appropriations] bills to the floor and see what we can move," he said. "But if somebody just sits up and says, 'Oh, because there's a rescission bill, then I'm not going to work on Appropriations,' you can always find an excuse not to do something. Let's figure out how we can work forward."
Fox News
5 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
These are the Republicans who voted against Trump's $9 billion clawback of foreign aid, NPR funding
Though Senate Republicans were successful in their mission to pass President Donald Trump's clawback package, not every member of the conference was on board. Only two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined with every Senate Democrat to vote against the $9 billion package geared toward clawing back foreign aid and public broadcasting funding. Senate Republican leaders had hoped that stripping $400 million in cuts to Bush-era international AIDS and HIV prevention funding could win over all the holdouts, both public and private. But the lawmakers who voted against the bill had deeper concerns about the level of transparency during the process and the impact successful rescissions could have on Congress' power of the purse. Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she agreed with rescissions in general and supports them during the appropriations process, but couldn't get behind the White House's push because of a lack of clarity from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about exactly what would be cut and how. She said that "the sparse text" sent to lawmakers included little detail and did not give a specific accounting of programs that would be cut to hit the original $9.4 billion target. "For example, there are $2.5 billion in cuts to the Development Assistance account, which covers everything from basic education, to water and sanitation, to food security — but we don't know how those programs will be affected," she said. Murkowski demanded a return to legislating and appeared to warn that lawmakers were just taking marching orders from the White House rather than doing their own work. Both Murkowski and Collins were also concerned about the cuts to public broadcasting, particularly to rural radio stations. Both attempted to make changes to the bill during the vote-a-rama. Collins' ultimately decided not to bring her amendment, which would have reduced the total amount of cuts in the bill to north of $6 billion, to the floor. However, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., still brought the change for a vote. And Murkowski offered an amendment that would have drastically reduced the cuts to public broadcasting. The climactic vote for the bill came hours after tsunami warnings rippled through Alaska, and Murkowski argued that federal warnings were relayed through local public broadcasting. "The tsunami warnings are now thankfully canceled, but the warning to the U.S. Senate remains in effect," she said. "Today of all days, we should vote down these misguided cuts to public broadcasting." Still, both attempts to modify the bill failed to pass muster. Their decision to go against the package left some scratching their heads. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., argued that the cuts amounted to less than a tenth of a percent of the federal government's entire budget. "This should be a chip shot, OK? I have faith in [OMB Director] Russ Vought," he said. "I have faith in the Trump administration. They're not going to cut things that are important spending." Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who is leading the bill in the Senate, rebuked the duo's arguments and said that lawmakers weighing in on the rescissions package was in line with their legislative duties. "That's exactly what we're doing," the Missouri Republican said. "I would hope that maybe what this will also do is highlight some of the wasteful spending, so when we get into the appropriations process in the next few months that we would be more keen to be focused on saving people money." Trump's bill, which would cancel unspent congressionally approved funding, would slash just shy of $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS. Some lawmakers, like Sen. Thom Tillis, who earlier this month voted against Trump's "big, beautiful bill" over cuts to Medicaid funding, understood where the pair were coming from. The North Carolina Republican told Fox News Digital that Collins, in particular, would be leading negotiations for an end-of-year bipartisan funding deal with Senate Democrats, and to vote in favor of canceling congressionally approved funding could hurt her ability to find a solution to keep the government funded. "I don't think people really understand the value of your word and your consistency and your living up to commitments and how important that is to getting things done," Tillis said. "And this, I think, that's what Susan's looking at, I think Murkowski is as well, and I respect them for that."
