Speaker Mike Johnson is putting pressure on Senate Republicans to pass President Donald Trump’s rescissions package.
Johnson told reporters Monday that clawing back just $9 billion in funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid should be an easy vote for Republican senators. The speaker’s remarks come as several GOP senators have said they oppose some of the proposed cuts and signaled they will vote against the rescissions request if the package is not amended.
“I have concerns,” Johnson told reporters when asked about the prospects of the Senate altering the rescissions package to appease GOP moderates. “I mean, this should be a pretty simple matter from our perspective, so I’m not sure what to expect, but I hope they keep it intact.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is racing to pass the president’s $9.4 billion rescissions package by a July 18 deadline. The request includes clawing back $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — a nonprofit that financially supports NPR and PBS — and $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid, including funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The total $9.4 billion rescissions request represents just a fraction of 1% of the federal budget.
USAID used taxpayer dollars to send thousands of viruses — including close relatives of the COVID-19 virus — to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported Tuesday. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Breitbart in January that he believed that the virus may have been the result of a leak at the Chinese-military linked biolab.
The Senate is expected to vote on a procedural motion to advance the bill as early as Tuesday. However, several moderate GOP senators are threatening to oppose the rescissions package, citing their support for preserving funding for certain global health and public broadcasting programs.
Thune can afford to spare just three GOP votes given Senate Republicans’ 53-47 majority. Four House Republicans voted against the rescissions package when it passed the lower chamber in June.
Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who voted against Trump’s signature tax and immigration bill, has signaled that she will also oppose the president’s rescissions package if changes to the measure are not adopted. The moderate GOP senator opposes slashing $400 million in funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, which began under former President George W. Bush. Proponents of the rescissions package note that the federal government would still provide $10 billion to the AIDS relief program.
“I can’t imagine why we would want to terminate that program,” Collins told reporters Tuesday, arguing the global health program has averted millions of infant deaths.
Collins and other GOP senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alsaka and Mike Rounds of South Dakota, have expressed concerns about the potential impact of cuts to public broadcasting programs for rural areas in the respective states.
“I hope you feel the urgency that I’m trying to express on behalf of the people in rural Alaska and I think in many parts of rural America where this is their lifeline,” Murkowski told White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought during an appropriations hearing in June.
The White House and congressional leadership have countered that the proposed cuts are necessary to begin making headway on the country’s $37 trillion national debt.
“This is supposed to be the lower hanging fruit,” Johnson continued. “As usual, I asked them [the Senate] not to modify our work.”
Trump has said that he will not take kindly to the Senate weakening cuts to public broadcasting within the rescissions package.
“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Rescissions Bill,” Trump wrote Thursday on the social media platform Truth Social. “Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement.”
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