House Republicans gave the final stamp of approval early Friday morning to a package of $9 billion in spending cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing a win to President Donald Trump.
Congress passed the package — which is part of Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency efforts — under an obscure presidential budget law used to circumvent the Senate filibuster. The measure will now head to the president to be signed into law.
Trump is the first president in roughly 30 years to successfully use the maneuver, in a show of deference to the White House from the legislative branch – which is specifically given the power of the purse in the US Constitution.
Roughly $8 billion will be taken from congressionally approved foreign aid programs as part of the White House’s efforts to dismantle the US Agency for International Development. Another $1.1 billion comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS.
The final tally was 216-213, with GOP Reps. Mike Turner and Brian Fitzpatrick the only Republicans to vote against the package.
The spending cuts package, which codifies some of DOGE’s cuts into law, was a key priority for Trump and conservatives who have long railed against ballooning federal spending.
Ahead of final passage, however, the package ran into problems in the narrowly divided House, as some of the same members demanded a separate and unrelated promise from GOP leadership calling for more transparency on the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The issue of more transparency over the Epstein case has percolated for days on Capitol Hill, placing an awkward wedge between Trump and some of his most steadfast supporters in the House GOP. Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team spent hours on Thursday afternoon with members of the House Rules Committee negotiating over the path forward.
Ultimately, the committee voted Thursday night to advance the DOGE cuts package as well as a non-binding resolution that calls for the release of additional Jeffrey Epstein files following calls from a number of Republicans for more transparency surrounding the case. There is nothing that would compel this to the floor, however.
After the House passed the DOGE cuts package, Trump, Johnson and congressional Republicans were quick to tout the move. On Truth Social, Trump said, “THIS IS BIG!!!”
The speaker said he was “delighted” to move the DOGE cuts package to the president’s desk.
“We’re going to downsize the scope of government. Government is too large. It does too many things, and it does almost nothing well. We believe in a limited government that’s accountable and efficient and effective for the people, and we’re going to continue to demonstrate that through our actions here on the floor,” he said.
But Johnson would not commit to bringing the non-binding Epstein resolution to the floor.
“We will see how all of this develops. We’re in line with the White House, there’s no daylight between us,” he said.
The spending cuts package is $400 million less than the initial package the House passed after Senators rejected a plan to cut PEPFAR, a global program to combat AIDS. But conservatives still voted for the package when it came up for its second vote in the House arguing it contained significant spending cuts in other areas of global health.
“It’s disappointing that we’re, you know, $37 trillion in debt. This, to me, was low hanging fruit. We saw how DOGE exposed a lot of this misuse of funds. It’s disappointing that the Senate took it out,” Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri said. “It’s better than nothing. So I think that at least we’re able to make some spending reductions.”
Passage of the bill, however, now raises questions about how and whether Democrats and Republicans will be able to work together to keep the government funded past the September 30 deadline. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer argued the process has cast doubt on whether Democrats can work in good faith with Republican lawmakers who could agree to a spending deal now and pull future funding later.
Schumer said that he does not “have much faith” in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s insistence that Senate Republicans will approach government funding in a bipartisan way, after White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said earlier on Thursday that the appropriations process should be “less bipartisan.”
“Every time they have tried to resist Trump and Vought, they have folded – as recently as last night. I don’t have much faith in that,” Schumer told CNN.
GOP appropriators argue that the rescissions package shouldn’t have any impact on those future spending talks and if it does, that is Democrats’ own choice.
“It’s up to them,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole said.
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