A bill to cut spending on foreign aid and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting passed the Senate early Thursday.
The bill passed 51-48, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska opposing it, according to Fox News.
Collins voted against the bill even after a proposed $400 million cut to an AIDS prevention program, which was one of the cuts Collins disliked, was taken out of the bill, according to CBS.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune noted that the bill codified cuts that had their roots in the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending,” Thune said, per Fox News.
This rescissions package will save the American taxpayers $9B.
With the national debt at unsustainable levels, it is essential to eliminate obvious waste that does not serve or benefit the American people. pic.twitter.com/nxomWHlRlt
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 15, 2025
“And now it’s time for the Senate to do its part to cut some of that waste out of the budget. It’s a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue,” he said.
The foreign aid cuts add up to not quite $8 billion, while the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR, loses just over $1 billion.
Democrats tried to stop the bill by adding doomed amendments. Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said the cuts wipe away spending that should never have been approved in the first place.
Democrats, he said, want to “keep as much of this money for their woke pet projects as they can.”
The Senate just officially voted to:
• END taxpayer funding for NPR & PBS
• Slash BILLIONS of dollars in funding for radical leftist foreign aid programs and NGOs
Huge win for America First. 🇺🇸
— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) July 17, 2025
“They were able to do that for four years,” he said. “That’s how you got to, you know, DEIs in Burma and Guatemalan sex changes and voter ID in Haiti, which is ironic, because Democrats don’t support voter ID here, but they’re willing to pay it for it in another country.”
As the vote goes to the House, Speaker Mike Johnson said that House Republicans wanted the package the House passed to be approved as it was sent to the Senate.
“We need to claw back funding, and we’ll do as much as we’re able,” Johnson said, CBS reported. The House has until Friday to pass the bill.
Some bureaucrat decided it was a good idea to spend $500K on electric buses in Rwanda, and nobody told them “no.”
President Trump’s rescission bill gives Congress a chance to step up to the plate and say NO. pic.twitter.com/7Fclo2b3ws
— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) July 16, 2025
Should Republicans who vote against this bill be primaried?
However, there could be a silver lining to the change that saved the international AIDS prevention program.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska had said at the time the cuts passed the House that his vote was contingent on that program surviving.
Bacon told the Nebraska Examiner that he was told by House leadership “that PEPFAR funding for life-saving treatments will not be affected. Because of these reassurances, I voted ‘yes.’”
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