Just after midnight, the House of Representatives approved a $9 billion rescissions package by a 216-213 vote. The bill now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature which is expected on Friday.
Two Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mike Turner of Ohio, voted against the measure. Fitzpatrick, you may recall, also voted against passage of Trump’s big, beautiful bill earlier this month. He is a moderate from a swing district in the state that Democrats are hoping to flip in next year’s midterms.
Noting that Turner had not publicly discussed his opposition to the bill, Spectrum News contacted his office for a comment. Turner’s office replied, “His vote will be his statement.”
The bill, formally called H.R. 4 – Rescissions Act of 2025, can be viewed here. It initially proposed $9.4 billion in cuts, but ultimately passed with approximately $400 million less. Republicans decided to abandon their proposal to slash funding from a federal program dedicated to combating AIDS globally.
This legislation will block $8 billion in funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and $1 billion to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the remainder of the fiscal year. Fox News reported that “the dollars had been allocated by Congress for the duration of fiscal year 2025.”
Congress faced an end-of-day Friday deadline to pass this bill. Had this deadline not been met, the funds would have had to go toward their originally assigned purpose.
According to Fox, passage of this bill was seen “as a test run of a fiscal claw-back process. … The last time a rescissions package was signed into law was 1999.”
House Democrats tried to turn debate on this measure into an opportunity to exploit the divisions between Republicans over the Trump administration’s decision not to release the Epstein documents.
CBS News reported that Democrats were trying to force a vote on a bipartisan measure introduced by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) that “would force the Justice Department to release Epstein-related files within 30 days. … Instead, Republicans voted against the effort and offered a resolution that carries no legal weight to make the files public.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) argued, “If every Republican votes to block our attempt to release the records, they are telling Epstein’s victims, you don’t matter as much as our political convenience. And that should disgust every single one of us.”
It’s this kind of gamesmanship that has driven public approval of congressional Democrats down to 19%.
In the end, their tactics served only to delay the inevitable.
In one sense, it’s remarkable that $9 billion in spending cuts caused so much strife between lawmakers. As Sen. John Kennedy pointed out to Fox News host Will Cain earlier this week, it represents one tenth of 1% of the federal budget. But USAID and PBS/NPR are two of the Democrats’ favorite programs, making them politically symbolic targets.
Shortly after the midnight vote, Trump touted its passage in a post on Truth Social:
HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED. REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!
Although $9 billion may not sound like a significant savings, Republicans have been trying to defund PBS and NPR for decades. And, as revealed in February, USAID has largely functioned as a global charity for progressive causes.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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