Congress has the power of the purse and they have snapped the wallet shut programs that are not aligned with the interests of American taxpayers.
In a big legislative win for President Donald J. Trump, the US House and Senate approved a $9 billion rescission package derived from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) recommended cuts.
As the bills were approaching a vote, Trump urged passage saying on X/Twitter, “It is very important that all Republicans adhere my Rescissions Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together. Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement.”
In this first rescission bill codifying two of the DOGE efforts and President Trump’s Executive orders, both the US House and Senate passed a $9.4 billion rescission bill defunding United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR and PBS). The bill cancels roughly $8 billion in foreign aid and $1.1 billion for public broadcasting.
The Office of Budget Management said, “We sent the first rescissions package to Capitol Hill. This package contains BILLIONS in wasteful foreign aid and federal funding for NPR and PBS.”
The legislation passed along a party line vote with a few defecting Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) made a point to say that that this is the first rescissions package to be passed in nearly thirty years.
White House budget chief Russell Vought said it is 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.”
Efforts to cut NPR and PBS from their taxpayer subsidy go all the way back to President Ronald Reagan in 1989. No president until now, under Trump, has had the public mandate and votes in congress to finally cut off the funding.
It is not just that NPR and PBS have moved to the radical left in their corporate ideology, but also that their business model has no place in the modern media environment. When they began, there were few programs for children and no cable TV, satellite radio, or the Internet. The media environment has changed dramatically since 1967, and the reason for a publicly funded TV and radio network no longer exists. Even without the radical left-wing politics, today’s access to information and technology makes a publicly funded broadcast system obsolete. These stations can continue to broadcast within their own budget capability the same way every other media outlet has to compete.
Important foreign aid aimed at HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment along with other high priority and American interest programs remain in tact.
Here’s just some of the waste, fraud, and abuse identified within USAID:
- $67,000 for testing insect powder nutrition on children in Madagascar.
- $33,000 for “Being LGBTI in the Caribbean.”
- $643,000 for LGBTQI+ programs in the Western Balkans. $567,000 for LBGTQI+ programs in Uganda.
- $5 million for the "Minority Serving Institute Fellowship Cooperative Agreement." $595,400 for training women in gender equity.
- $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda.
- $6 million for “net zero cities” in Mexico.
- $2.1 million for climate resilience in Southeast Asia, Latin America, & East Africa.