Senate Republicans have until Friday to pass a $9.4 billion rescissions package requested by President Donald Trump last month. Otherwise, they will be forced to start the process all over again, virtually ending Congress’s chance of making permanent the spending cuts the Department of Government Efficiency put in place earlier this year.
“We have other rescission packages that we will send if we have a good vote,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told the Washington Examiner. “Next week may be a huge pivot point in how this town does business and will be an exciting milestone to be able to make actual permanent reductions to some of these savings that we’ve identified as an administration.”
Recommended Stories
- The autopen clemency chaos is Biden's latest mess
- Trump’s welcome crackdown on Chinese ownership of American farmland
- Trump's encouraging pivot on Putin
Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the president may submit a rescission package to Congress listing specific spending items they want returned to the federal Treasury. The identified spending is then frozen for 45 days, giving Congress time to approve it. If Congress does not act, the money is unfrozen. If the administration still does not want to spend it, it must resubmit a new rescission bill based on new “relevant information not in the previous proposal.”
Trump submitted his first rescission package on May 28, and the House of Representatives passed it on June 12. The Senate must pass it before Friday or Trump will be forced to start over. If the upper chamber amends it, the House will have to come back and approve the changes. Fortunately for Republicans, the Impoundment Control Act changed Senate rules, allowing a rescission vote to pass with a simple majority. No 60-vote threshold is needed.
The $9.4 billion rescission proposed by Trump is modest compared to the federal government’s $7 trillion yearly spending, and against the $2 trillion it will borrow to do so. This is so despite the government posting a surplus in June, the first in 20 years. But as Vought said, if this first rescission vote goes well, Trump is ready to send more cuts to Congress for approval. This is something all fiscally responsible politicians should want to get done.
The first cuts should be easy for Congress to approve. Conservatives have wanted to axe taxpayer subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for decades, and this rescissions bill would do that. The CPB funnels half a billion taxpayer dollars to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio every year, which is about 15% of their revenues. Even if PBS and NPR didn’t have an obvious ideological and partisan bias against conservatives, there would be no reason why taxpayers should fund a news organization. There are many other news sources, and many of them are much better.
The bulk of the proposed cuts, about $8.3 billion, come from the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID funds some good programs, but there is also a lot of waste and improper financing of left-wing policy preferences.
USAID spends more than $4 billion on global health programs each year, and will still spend $3.5 billion after being moved to the State Department. Trump’s rescissions identify half a billion in spending that goes to programs the administration labels “antithetical to American interests,” including spending on “family planning,” “LGBTQI+ activities,” and “equity” programs. Another $800 million is being rescinded from USAID’s Migration and Refugee Assistance spending, which has been used to help mass migration to the United States and the deliberate undermining of America’s sovereignty.
Trump’s $8.3 billion in USAID cuts, less than a fifth of its $50 billion budget, are in line with the State Department reorganization that Secretary Marco Rubio continued to implement last week by firing 1,400 surplus employees. These were not random last-in-first-out cost-cutting firings but amounted to a deliberate ideological purge of an institution that has become out of step with American values and interests.
DEMOCRATS DEFEND CHILD LABOR AT CALIFORNIA MARIJUANA FARMS
Most cuts came from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which Rubio said had “become a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against anti-woke leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil.” Our national security will not be undermined by such partisans being shown the door.
Trump is clearing partisans out of executive agencies. The best thing the Senate can do to help him is to pass the rescissions bill so he can send another one.