How the Senate saved PEPFAR — but still greenlit billions in aid cuts

After an all-night marathon of amendments, the U.S. Senate voted to advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package on Wednesday. The package will claw back nearly $8 billion in previously approved funding for foreign aid. The vote came after more than 12 hours of near-continuous roll-call votes, a process known in Capitol Hill as a vote-a-rama. Triggered by the bill’s use of budget reconciliation, the process allowed any senator to offer amendments — producing a legislative showdown that stretched past midnight. Just after 2 a.m., the senators came to a 51-48 vote, pushing ahead a final bill that’s slated to strip billions of dollars in development, humanitarian, and economic assistance. It will also slice away more than $1 billion in previously approved funds from the United Nations, its agencies and its peacekeeping operations, and rescind funding for public broadcasting in the United States. “While $9 billion is a lot of money to any normal person, it's a drop in the bucket for federal spending,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, posted on the social media platform X before the voting began. “This is step one. We're in touch with the White House on more cuts.” With the Senate's vote complete, the spotlight now shifts back to the House of Representatives. House lawmakers now need to approve the Senate bill and send it to the president’s desk — all before a deadline of Friday, July 18. If they fail to do so, the rescissions request will expire. It’s not the first time the House has seen the bill, as those lawmakers passed a more expansive version of the package in June. Their package was virtually identical to the White House’s original request and included a provision to strip $400 million from PEPFAR, the country’s flagship HIV/AIDS program. Senate lawmakers removed that piece from the package on Tuesday afternoon, leading the Senate to advance the request in a procedural vote later that night. But despite the restoration of those funds — and clauses excluding rescissions to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, nutrition, or maternal and child health programming, along with Food for Peace, and U.S. commodity-based food aid — it wasn’t enough for all Republican lawmakers to get on board. Three Republican senators — Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, and Lisa Murkowski — voted against the first procedural hurdle Tuesday night, breaking with their party to vote alongside Senate Democrats. “We’re lawmakers. We should be legislating,” said Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, on the Senate floor. “What we’re getting now is 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 on another round.’ I don’t accept that.” By 9 p.m. Tuesday night, lawmakers had come to a 50-50 split — and Vice President JD Vance stepped in to cast the tie-breaking vote. The senators immediately began pushing ahead, and on Wednesday afternoon, they convened for the marathon voting session. Lawmakers voted on amendments to restore foreign aid, shield public broadcasting, and protect funding for faith-based organizations, all of which failed to make it into the final package. The all-night tug-of-war The first amendment was announced by Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. Coons proposed canceling the rescission of $496 million in international disaster assistance, which the U.S. government has historically used to respond to natural disasters, conflicts, and other emergencies overseas. That amendment failed by one vote, with the same trio of Republican lawmakers — Collins, McConnell, and Murkowski — voting alongside Democrats to restore the funds. For many senators, it seemed to come down to not just the programs but the lack of detail in the request, along with the precedent it would set going forward. There was the moral argument — one that Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, put bluntly. Over the last five months, he said, “tens of thousands, at least, maybe hundreds of thousands of babies, have gotten HIV/AIDS from their moms because we pulled funding.” “We’re the United States of America, and one of the reasons that we have such a strong reputation is that we do things that are right because they're right — not because our voters are going to reward us immediately, not because we get some geopolitical advantage, but because we're the damn good guys,” said Schatz, speaking before the procedural vote on Tuesday. Throughout the night, senators tried to propose amendments to preserve funding for global health, family planning, and food programs — and again and again, each of those amendments failed. Then, there was the details argument. Instead of delineating particular programs where funds would be cut, the package rescinds large chunks of money from certain aid accounts, such as the $496 million for international disaster relief. Within its initial rescissions request for disaster assistance, for example, the White House includes just a six-sentence description, one of which is: “This best serves the American taxpayer.” “We have no earthly idea what specific cuts are going to occur,” said Sen. Thomas Roland Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, speaking from the Senate floor. “I’m willing to give [the White House’s budget office] and the president the benefit of the doubt that they’re going to be responsible cuts. However, if we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds, and advisors to the president decide that they’re going to cut them anyway, there will be a reckoning.” There was also confusion about a new clause restricting the removal of funds from programs addressing HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, nutrition, maternal health, and child health. The president had initially proposed rescinding $500 million from these areas, claiming the cuts would “not reduce treatment but would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children.” The rescissions package presented to senators this week preserved funds for HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, nutrition, and maternal and child health — but kept the $500 million cash amount the same. It’s likely that all $500 million would be slashed from family planning and reproductive health programs, but the office of Sen. John Thune, the Republican majority leader, did not respond to a request for clarification in time for publication. “Let’s make this as simple as possible: The Senate doesn’t want to cut funding for AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases? Then let’s remove those rescissions,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, as he proposed an amendment on Wednesday. “I urge a yes vote.” Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, argued back: The latest version of the bill already does that, he said, while also targeting “egregious waste.” Schiff’s amendment failed by five votes. Lastly, there was the precedent argument. Both Republicans and Democrats voiced concern that passing this rescissions package — which if successful, is expected to be the first of many — would draw even deeper divides in an already-fractured Congress. “When a party controls the White House and both houses of Congress, it always has the power to use the rescissions process to pull a fast one,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “Suckering your partner into a deal in which you get something, and they get something, and then using the backdoor to cancel something that you don’t like? It’s bad faith.” “This is just an old-fashioned double cross. It’s a con job,” he added.“It destroys the ability of the Senate to function in a bipartisan way.”