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US Republicans early Friday approved President Donald Trump’s plan to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, vowing it was just the start of broader efforts by Congress to slash the federal budget.
The cuts achieve only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion in annual savings that tech billionaire and estranged Trump donor Elon Musk vowed to find before his acrimonious exit in May from a role spearheading federal cost-cutting.
But Republicans, who recently passed a domestic policy bill expected to add more than $3 trillion to the US debt, said the vote honoured Trump’s election campaign pledge to rein in runaway spending. Both chambers of Congress are Republican-controlled, meaning a mostly party-line House of Representatives vote of 216 to 213, moments after midnight, was sufficient to approve the Senate-passed measure.
“Instead of protecting the health, safety and well-being of the American people, House Republicans have once again rubber stamped Donald Trump’s extreme, reckless rescissions legislation,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement with fellow top Democrats.
The bill now heads to the White House to be signed by Trump, who praised his backers in the House.
Most of the cuts target programs for countries hit by disease, war and natural disasters. However, the move also eliminates $1.1 billion that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was scheduled to receive over the next two years.
Conservatives argue that the funding — which primarily supports more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, as well as public broadcasters NPR and PBS — is unnecessary and has led to biased coverage.
The bill initially included $400 million in cuts to a global AIDS program that is credited with saving 26 million lives, but that funding was saved by a rebellion by moderate Republicans.
The vote was a win for Trump and fiscal hawks seeking to support the mission of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched by Musk as Trump was swept to power, for radical savings.
Congress had already approved the cash that was clawed back, and Democrats framed the bill as a betrayal of the bipartisan government funding process.
