EXCLUSIVE — The conservative tapped by the White House to help see to fruition President Donald Trump’s quest to slash foreign aid and public broadcasting funds views the moment as something greater than clawing back $9 billion Congress previously approved.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) considers the weeks of vote-wrangling, centrist complaints, and last-minute deal-cutting as the GOP’s test of “political will” for spending cuts in Trump’s second term.

Recommended Stories

• Trump won't shut down Epstein files outrage with special prosecutor recommendation
• Sean Duffy pushes permitting reform to 'clear the deck' of red tape
• NYC Republican mayoral candidate says Cuomo 'slapping fannies and killing grannies'

Republicans did, after all, use a mechanism not invoked by lawmakers since 1992 that’s known as a White House rescission request.

“I’d like to see more. I think there’s a desire in the [Republican Conference] to actually do something about wasteful spending,” Schmitt told the Washington Examiner in an interview from his Senate office. “I think that’s what was so important, was to demonstrate the political will to do it. Because people talk about it all the time, and this doesn’t happen. It hasn’t happened in decades.”

But the road ahead for greater spending reductions is filled with obstacles that have, in some ways, been complicated by the rescission. 

The GOP-led Senate early Thursday passed the rescission request that centers on money for global health programs and public broadcasting like NPR and PBS that Republicans saw as inappropriate uses for U.S. taxpayer money, save for two defectors: centrist Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). It marked the latest in a series of GOP policy wins on filibuster-skirting legislation that have Democrats vowing retaliation for what they see as precedent-setting moves by Republicans.

The measure now awaits final approval from the House and comes on the heels of Republicans passing into law Trump’s signature domestic policy bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The $9 billion rescission is but 0.10% of the $7 trillion budget. Still, the move to take money already appropriated in a federal budget passed with bipartisan support has Democrats weighing whether to give Republicans the required votes in September to pass next fiscal year’s budget.

The government funding threats “ring pretty hollow” from Democrats, Schmitt said, who sees a lingering “broad appetite” for the White House to send larger rescission requests now that Republicans have found success with the process.

“If 10 Democrats don’t want to work with us on cutting out all this NPR funding when they’re actively, overtly partisan, then we have a responsibility to act on our own,” Schmitt said. “That’s what we did.”

He conceded to facing challenges that could have spelled failure for this and future rescissions, such as heartburn from members over initially stripping broadcast funds for rural Native American tribes and $400 million to combat AIDS through the Bush-era program PEPFAR. Both were ultimately preserved in the final version to appease concerns.

SENATE PASSES TRUMP’S DOGE CUTS AFTER MARATHON VOTING SESSION

But Republicans, including Schmitt, say it remains an open-ended question whether they may try to replicate the process after funding the government with Democrats for 2026.

“Obviously, this last experience was a struggle. We haven’t done it since I’ve been here,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters. “We’ll see what the future holds. But I think right now, the goal is to is to get into the appropriations process.”