President Donald Trump has secured a victory that has eluded conservatives for decades.
The House of Representatives passed a White House-submitted rescissions package late Thursday night in a 216 to 213 vote, cutting $9 billion in funds already appropriated by Congress for foreign aid and public television. The bill’s next stop is Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
The package ends taxpayer subsidization of left-leaning NPR and PBS and eliminates funding for foreign aid grants for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The successful rescission of appropriated spending is a victory long sought unsuccessfully by spending hawks in Congress.
“HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”
The victory showcases Trump’s effectiveness at steamrolling remaining establishment opposition, even in the recalcitrant Senate, where a handful of big-spending moderate Republicans retain an outsized influence.
Two House Republicans voted against the procedural vote that deemed the Senate-amended rescissions bill passed while also allowing unrelated legislation to move to the floor.
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Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), a Trump nemesis just days removed from voting against Trump’s big, beautiful bill and who recently proposed to another Trump target, Fox News reporter and White House Correspondents Association board member Jacqui Heinrich, and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a den of establishment members with close ties to the shadowy intelligence state, opposed the vote.
The cuts apply to fiscal year 2024 spending levels that had been extended through the 2025 fiscal year as well, a year-over-year freeze that was a first for Congress.
While reducing spending levels to pre-Covid levels was a stretch goal for many conservatives, freezing spending for an entire fiscal year – although supplemented with additional funds to carry out Trump’s border security initiatives – was a significant achievement.
But by cutting spending even beyond previously frozen levels through his rescissions package, Trump has delivered a spending win unthinkable in Washington as recently as this year. And while $9 billion is relatively modest, future rescissions packages are likely on the horizon.
Before the vote Thursday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought signaled the White House would increasingly flex its muscles on spending.
“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,” Vought told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, adding, “There is no voter in the country that went to the polls and said, ‘I’m voting for a bipartisan appropriations process.’”
The next funding deadline is September 30, by which Congress must pass government funding bills or extend current funding with another continuing resolution.
If Trump and Vought are successful in muscling through additional rescissions packages by that deadline, the funding levels Congress would be extending will be even lower.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye
