The head of the White House budget office on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s push to enact sweeping cuts to federal funding, even as some Republican senators voiced concerns and raised questions about the breadth of them.
In opening remarks in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said the package – known on Capitol Hill as “rescissions” – awaiting a Senate vote was “carefully crafted, with input from Congress, to cut funding the American people find wholly objectionable.” The package, which claws back about $9.4 billion in previously appropriated government spending, was approved by the House earlier this month.
During the hearing, several Republican senators raised questions about the types of programs the Trump administration has proposed to slash or questioned how it is planning to go about implementing them. The White House sent the spending cuts request to Congress in early June as it seeks to formalize a slew of DOGE cuts to federal funding.
The senators’ concerns were primarily focused on proposed cuts to PEPFAR, an initiative aimed at combating HIV and AIDS enacted two decades ago by President George W. Bush’s administration that has been credited with saving tens of millions of lives, and proposed cuts to public broadcasting that some senators suggested could impact how information is relayed to rural communities.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the committee, said that PEPFAR “remains a bipartisan priority of Congress.” The Maine senator added that cutting funding focused on preventing disease transmission “would be extraordinarily ill-advised and short-sighted.”
Vought denied funding for lifesaving programs would be affected by the package. He said it was critical that the American people “understand that many foreign aid programs use benevolent-sounding titles to hide truly appalling activity that is not in line with American interests.”
Additionally, both Collins and South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds also sought assurances from Vought that public broadcasting cuts would not affect rural public-interest stations that can include emergency communications and hyper-local public-interest programming.
The cuts target the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a small chunk of the federal budget that provides some public funding for NPR and PBS.
During the hearing, Sen. Mitch McConnell emphasized the importance of the US maintaining “soft power” overseas.
“Reforming the way we invest in peace and stability is certainly worthwhile,” the Kentucky Republican said. “And there’s plenty of absolute nonsense masquerading as American aid that shouldn’t receive another bit of taxpayer funding.”
“But the administration’s attempt to root it out has been unnecessarily chaotic. In critical corners of the globe, instead of creating efficiencies, you’ve created vacuums for adversaries like China to fill,” McConnell continued.
“Responsible investments in soft power prevent conflict, preserve American influence, and save countless lives at the same time.”
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