The National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate agreed to legislation early Thursday that will cancel $9 billion in previously approved funding for public broadcasting and various foreign aid accounts, another victory for the Trump administration.
The 51-48 mostly party-line vote at about 2:30 a.m. sends the bill back to the House, where GOP lawmakers in that chamber would have to clear the final version for President Donald Trump’s signature before a Friday deadline.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski were the only Republicans to vote against passing the measure, which was opposed by all Democrats present and voting.
Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota was absent, and her staff said on social media that after she began to feel unwell Wednesday and saw the Capitol physician, she went to George Washington University Hospital, where “out of an abundance of caution, they are keeping her overnight.”
Murkowski voiced concerns with the legislation during a floor speech, saying the White House’s request lacked detail and could have negative repercussions around the world.
“We’ve got big, broad categories, but I haven’t been given the comfort, if you will, that we’re not impacting maternal and child health; that we’re not impacting HIV/AIDS; that we’re not impacting nutrition programs and programs related to tuberculosis, malaria, polio, neglected tropical disease, pandemic prevention, family planning,” Murkwoski said.
“I think that we are entitled to have that level of detail when these funds that we have authorized, that we have appropriated to are now being clawed back. I don’t think that that is too much to ask,” she said.
Murkowski said the right approach to addressing some conservatives’ perception of left-leaning bias at National Public Radio shouldn’t be to completely eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds both public radio and television.
The impact on local communities in rural areas, she said, could be significant, given that many people rely on their stations for emergency alerts related to tsunamis and other forms of extreme weather as well as educational programs.
Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, who managed the bill, said the cancellations were intended to “restore some fiscal sanity” that’s needed after “bureaucrats have betrayed the trust of the American people” by spending foreign aid dollars on programs he described as “offensive.”
“What this bill is about is to test the will of this chamber — if we can actually move forward on what the American people sent us here to do, which is to find waste, to find fraud and find abuse,” Schmitt said. “And also to realign the taxpayer dollars that go out the door with actual American interests.”
The win in the Senate for the GOP and Trump followed approval on July 1 of a massive tax and spending cut package he had advocated.
Two years of federal funds taken back
The rescissions bill will claw back $1.1 billion in previously approved spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributes funding to NPR, the Public Broadcasting Service and hundreds of local stations throughout the country. That money was slated to cover the fiscal year set to begin Oct. 1 and the following year.
The legislation also cancels about $8 billion in foreign aid spending that Congress had appropriated for dozens of programs, including global health initiatives.
Senate Republicans opted to preserve full funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds secured a handshake deal with White House budget director Russ Vought to transfer $9.4 million from an undisclosed account within the Interior Department to Native American radio stations. But that wasn’t included in the actual bill.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota and Wisconsin all hold public broadcasting stations that will receive a piece of that funding, according to Rounds’ office.
Lack of details
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis used floor debate to caution the White House budget office against going too far with the rescissions included in the bill and scolded the administration for not giving Congress more detail about what it wants to cut.
“The only time that we’ve had a successful rescissions package in modern history was 1992,” Tillis said, adding that request was approved, in part, because it was sent to Congress with “very detailed lists of specific programs that were going to be cut.”
The request this year, Tillis said, doesn’t include nearly that level of information. But he said he’s willing to vote for it anyway, giving the president and the Office of Management and Budget “the benefit of the doubt that they’re going to be responsible cuts.”
Tillis said he was assured the rescissions wouldn’t affect a $200 million account that provides non-miliary aid to Ukraine or foreign aid accounts like the one funding maternal and child health programs at a Sudanese refugee camp he visited earlier this year.
“However, if we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds, that advisers to the president decide that they’re going to cut anyway, then there will be a reckoning for that,” Tillis said.
‘It did not have to be this way’
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned Republicans that unilaterally cutting funding approved through bipartisan bills could upend the annual government funding process.
“It did not have to be this way and it still does not have to be this way,” Murray said. “In fact if Republicans come to their senses and vote this down, we can still go a different route. We can do what we have always done and consider bipartisan rescissions as part of our annual appropriations process.”
Congress must pass some sort of bipartisan funding bill before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, otherwise there will be a partial government shutdown.
Murray also said that “cutting these investments is just downright wrong.”
“We should not be voting to let children starve or die from preventable diseases. We should not be voting to go back on our word to the world,” Murray said. “Saving a couple pennies is not worth losing our credibility or causing millions of needless deaths across the globe. It is not even close.”
Democrats introduced a series of amendments to change portions of the bill related to public broadcasting funding and foreign aid, but did not succeed.
House Republicans up next
The reworked bill now goes back to the House, where GOP leaders in that chamber need nearly all their members to support the changes made in the Senate.
If the House cannot meet the Friday deadline, the White House budget office would be required to spend the funding it included in its original rescissions request, which it released in early June.
The House voted 214-212 earlier this year to send the original bill to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers raised concerns about various elements, including how reducing foreign aid spending would impact America’s leadership among adversarial countries like China and global health initiatives.
The Senate didn’t make many changes to the legislation, but did remove the proposed rescission for PEPFAR. The initiative, launched by former President George W. Bush, has saved more than 26 million lives.
The change decreased the total amount of funding that will be canceled from $9.4 billion to about $9 billion.
Both figures are miniscule compared to the $6.8 trillion the federal government spends each year, though this bill is meant to be the first of many the Trump administration hopes Republicans approve in the months and years ahead.
Login
