US Senate passes aid and public broadcasting cuts in victory for Trump

The US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.

The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.

Most of the cuts are to programmes to assist foreign countries stricken by disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates the $1.1bn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as blighted by “anti-right bias”.

Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But the Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting Trump’s policies since he began his second term in January.

The $9bn at stake is small in the context of the $6.8tn federal budget, and represents a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Dog)e.

By mid-June, Trump was blocking $425bn in funding that had been appropriated and approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.

However, the president and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.

The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation, without altering Trump’s request, by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.

But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programmes, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that Pepfar, a global programme to fight HIV/Aids launched in 2003 by President George W Bush, was being exempted.

The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9bn from $9.4bn, requiring another House vote before the measure could be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law.

The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.

Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans , Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. “You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Murkowski said told the Senate

She said the Trump administration had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Murkowski called for Congress to assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.

The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity”.

Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans had this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3tn to the country’s $36.2tn debt.

Democrats accused Republicans of giving up Congress’s constitutionally mandated control of federal spending.

“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, representing New York, said. “Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later.”

The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by 30 September to avoid a shutdown.

Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support.