The Senate narrowly approved President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package early Thursday morning after rejecting a series of Democratic measures to protect certain funds from the chopping block and delay its passage.
Senators voted 51 to 48 to send the president’s clawback funding request to the House for consideration. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — a duo that frequently joins together to oppose parts of the president’s agenda — voted “no” on the rescissions package.
No Senate Democrat voted for the rescissions bill, which clawed back $9 billion in previously appropriated funding for foreign aid and a public broadcasting nonprofit that financially supports NPR and PBS. Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith did not vote after being hospitalized Wednesday due to exhaustion.
Congressional GOP leaders are facing a July 18 deadline to send the rescissions package to the president’s desk. Speaker Mike Johnson will have to pass the clawback funding request in his chamber before Friday or the Trump administration will be forced to spend the $9 billion.
Senate GOP leadership excoriated their Democratic counterparts for opposing the reduction of federal spending, especially funding that Republicans have characterized as ripe for waste, fraud and abuse.
“Millions for the Green New Deal abroad,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Not on cent for working Americans here at home. That’s the warped priority of today’s Democrat Party.”
“We should never be funding vegan food in Africa, social media mentorship in Europe or Net Zero Cities in Mexico,” Barrasso continued. “Americans voted for fiscal savings – not foreign slush funds.”
The Senate’s passage of the rescissions bill is a notable accomplishment for Senate Majority Leader John Thune who corralled enough votes to pass the package despite a looming deadline and unease from some GOP senators to cut spending outside of the normal appropriations process. The last successful rescissions bill to pass Congress was in 1999 under former President Bill Clinton.
Collins, who helped defeat a rescissions package during Trump’s first term, said the Trump administration’s “sparse” details about which programs in targeted accounts would be affected with funding cuts led her to oppose the bill.
“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,” Collins said in a statement Tuesday.
Murkowski also opposed the rescissions bill, arguing the clawback request infringed on Congress’ authority to appropriate funds and sidelined the annual appropriations process during which lawmakers can rescind previously allocated monies. She also voted against the bill due to her opposition to slashing funding for public broadcasting.
“What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round,’” Murkowski said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “I don’t accept that.”
The Alaska Republican supplied the key vote to get the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act over the finish line. She called the deliberations leading up to her ultimate support for the president’s legislative agenda “agonizing.”
The president’s rescissions request would claw back just 0.1% of the federal government’s roughly $7 trillion budget. The $9 billion package represents just a sliver of the projected $175 billion in alleged savings identified by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The president’s rescissions package initially proposed clawing back $9.4 billion, but the Senate amended the bill to strike a proposed $400 million cut to global AIDS relief. The amendment also added new language explicitly protecting funding for maternal health, malaria and tuberculosis.
The White House supported the change, which was made to appease some GOP senators who have championed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program. The proposed cut would have targeted LGBTQ+ education and capacity building — and would have preserved 86% of PEPFAR funding.
Passage of the rescissions bill comes after congressional Republicans enacted a $1.6 trillion cut to mandatory spending in the president’s sweeping tax relief and immigration package that Trump signed into law on July 4. The president’s signature bill is projected to increase budget deficits by more than $3 trillion over a ten-year period, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Republican lawmakers and White House officials, however, have argued that congressional scorekeeper’s budget analysis has a poor track record.
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