By KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s request to cancel about $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting spending is nearing passage in the Senate, an action that would have a tiny impact on the nation’s rising debt but could have major ramifications for future spending fights in Congress.
Spending bills generally need bipartisan support to advance in the Senate. But the legislation before the Senate gives Republicans the opportunity to undo some of the previously approved spending without Democratic support as they follow through on Trump’s efforts to target the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and roll back help for nations suffering from conflict, drought and disease.
The Trump administration is promising more rescission packages to come if the first effort is successful. Democrats say doing so jeopardizes a process that requires lawmakers from both parties to work together to fund the nation’s priorities.
The move to cut a sliver of previously approved spending comes after Republicans muscled Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill to approval in both chambers without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase future federal deficits by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans were using the president’s rescissions request to target “wasteful spending.”
“It’s a small but important step for fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue,” Thune said as the Senate opened on Wednesday.
Lawmakers clash over cuts to public radio and TV stations
In opposing the bill, Democrats said Congress was ceding its spending powers to the executive branch with little idea of how the White House Office of Management and Budget would apply the cuts. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the legislation a “terrible bill that guts local news, defunds rural radio stations and makes America less safe on the world stage.”
The legislation would claw back nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s due to receive during the next two budget years.
The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
The corporation distributes more than 70% of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.
Some Republicans had expressed worries about how local radio and televisions stations would be able to survive without federal assistance. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some funding administered by the Department of the Interior would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in more than a dozen states.
Democrats are not assured by the side agreements. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said in some rural areas of his state pubic radio is the most reliable ways to get news and emergency alerts during wildfire season.
“These cuts will lead to rural public radio stations laying off staff, reducing programming, or even shutting down entirely,” Kelly said.
Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said the side deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save, while leaving behind all other stations, including many that serve Native populations.”
“Simply providing a one-time payment to Tribal stations will not ensure they can continue their current service or even survive,” Riley said.
Slashing billions of dollars from foreign aid
The legislation would also claw back about $8 billion in foreign aid spending. Among the cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country and $496 million to provide humanitarian assistance such as food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There’s also a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost the economies and democratic institutions in developing and strategically important countries.
Republicans said they winnowed down the president’s request by taking out his proposed $400 million cut to a program known as PEPFAR. That change increased the prospects for the bill’s passage. The politically popular program is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, to combat HIV/AIDS.
Democrats said the changes Republicans made to save PEPFAR funding were not enough. They said that the Trump administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the amount of money it takes to save a starving child or prevent the transmission of disease is miniscule, even as the investments secure cooperation with the U.S. on other issues.
But the cuts being made to foreign aid programs through Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency were having life-and-death consequences around the world, he said.
“People are dying right now, not in spite of us but because of us,” Schatz said. “We are causing death.”
Republicans are facing a Friday deadline
Republicans providing just enough votes to take up the bill, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a 50-50 tie on Tuesday night. Three Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against advancing the measure. That sets up on Wednesday what’s known as a vote-a-rama, in which lawmakers will vote on scores of proposed amendments to the bill. Once the amendment process is over, the Senate will vote on final passage.
The House has already shown its support for the president’s request with a mostly party line 214-212 vote, but since the Senate is amending the bill, it will have to go back to the House for another vote.
The bill must be signed into law by midnight Friday for the proposed rescissions to kick in. If Congress doesn’t act by then, the spending stands.