US Congress clears Trump's $9 billion rescissions package

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package, which will cut billions of dollars in previously approved foreign assistance funding. It’s the first rescissions package to be passed in nearly three decades — but according to White House budget chief Russell Vought, it’s unlikely to be the last. “[It was a] very historic moment, the return of using rescissions,” said Vought, speaking to reporters before the vote on Thursday. “[We’re] getting the muscle memory for that back into the system.” The package — which passed by a vote of 216-213 just past midnight on Friday — has been making its way through Congress for weeks. The Trump administration sent its initial request to lawmakers in late May, and across 22 pages, Vought laid out how the White House wanted Congress to backtrack on $9.4 billion in “wasteful and unnecessary spending” that was “antithetical to American interests.” That included funding for humanitarian, development, and global health programs, along with support for the United Nations and its agencies. “$9 billion worth of crap that was in our federal funding that is now being rescinded,” said the White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in a press briefing on Thursday. “This is a good thing for the American people, and the American taxpayer.” By mid-June, the package was approved by the House of Representatives — and earlier this week, it passed in the Senate. But this time, there were a few caveats: Lawmakers removed a $400 million rescission from PEPFAR, the country’s flagship HIV program, and added language prohibiting rescissions to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, nutrition, and maternal and child health programming. The lawmakers also preserved funding for U.S. commodity-based food aid initiatives such as Food for Peace. Despite those carveouts, the rescissions package still totaled $9 billion — $7.9 billion of which affects foreign aid. After 12 hours of debate, the package passed in the Senate by three votes, teeing it up to return to the House of Representatives. But before the House could vote on the package, it had to be approved by the rules committee. For hours, lawmakers sparred over the package, with Democrats offering up amendments to save international disaster assistance, protect development aid, and release the Epstein files — dialing into a domestic scandal that for weeks has inflamed Trump’s "Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, base. None of those amendments passed, and after three hours of back-and-forth, the package went to the House floor. “It’s unfortunate that the Senate was not able to execute all of President Trump’s recommended rescissions,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, referring to the removal of PEPFAR cuts. “That said, there are many pertinent rescissions that remain, and they are very impactful.” That includes cuts of $2.5 billion in development assistance;; $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid; $1 billion in support to the United Nations, its agencies, and its peacekeeping operations; and $500 million in global health programs, among other buckets of money. Three entities that Trump had previously stated were “unnecessary” — the U.S. Institute of Peace, the U.S. African Development Foundation, and the Inter-American Foundation — were also targeted for cuts, and are now poised to lose $15 million, $22 million, and $27 million in previously approved funds, respectively. Each of those institutions has been involved in a legal back-and-forth with the Trump administration, and after USIP and IAF found success in court, the government appealed the cases, leading to another round of mass firings at USIP just last week. Just over $1 billion will also be gutted from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds the National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. “All of this is being done in the name of combating waste,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, during Thursday’s debate. “I will tell you what waste is. Five hundred tonnes of food, grown by American farmers, destroyed at a cost of $133,000 to American taxpayers, because of the chaos caused by the dismantling of USAID.” Aside from the broad categories of cuts to foreign aid, there’s little information in the package about which programs would bear the brunt of those cuts — something that both Republicans and Democrats have raised concerns about. “This rescissions bill will pull back unobligated funds — funds that have not yet been spent on any specific contract or grant — and Trump is now president, not Biden,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, speaking in the committee hearing just before the House vote. “Do you know what specific programs are going to be cut here? Because I sure as hell don’t.” The cuts come five months after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, dismembered the U.S. Agency for International Development. From late January to mid-March, the Trump administration canceled nearly 85% of USAID’s programming. “We are taking one small step to cut wasteful spending, but one giant leap toward fiscal sanity,” said Rep. Aaron Bean, a Republican from Florida. “Here’s my challenge to the White House: Let’s do a rescissions package every month, because America has had enough.” And back at the White House, Trump’s team seems to be on board, with Vought telling reporters before the final vote that another rescissions package was likely. “We wanted to see how this vote was going to go. It was really important for it to be successful,” Vought said. “We’re not here to announce anything on this front, but in terms of seeing whether this was a useful effort that was not a waste of time, it certainly has satisfied that threshold. We’ll see where we go from here.”