The House is intending to vote next week on the request for cuts, a person familiar with the plan said.
The request is a first test of what could be a barrage of similar requests. “We want to make sure Congress passes its first rescissions bill, including the DOGE, and we will send more if they pass it,” Russ Vought, director of the US Office of Management and Budget, told Fox Business News last week.
The White House first floated the package in April, but placed it on the back burner as Republicans tried to secure the votes necessary to pass Trump’s tax cut proposal known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Now it’s re-emerging as an inducement to win the votes of GOP senators concerned that Trump’s budget would add trillions to the national debt. Earlier Tuesday, Musk assailed the tax-and-spend bill, calling it a “disgusting abomination” for the level of spending in the legislation.
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Rescission is a little-used legislative tactic for clawing back spending already appropriated by Congress. Under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Trump can freeze the funding for 45 days while Congress considers the cuts using a fast-track process. If Congress doesn’t act within that time, the president must spend the money.
The measure can pass the Senate with just 50 votes rather than the usual 60. Congress can amend the package and remove cuts it doesn’t favour.
Vought thinks he’s spotted a loophole in that law, which he calls a “pocket rescission.” If the president requests a rescission in the last 45 days of the fiscal year that ends on September 30, the funding authority will permanently expire before Congress can act.
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That tactic is “rare but not unprecedented,” said Wade Miller, senior adviser for the Center for Renewing America, the think tank Vought founded in 2021. He called it a “constitutionally valid strategy.”
The Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress that polices spending laws, has a different view. The law also requires “sufficient time to be prudently obligated.”
Given the narrow Republican majority in the Senate, the proposal might not have enough votes, at least in its present form. “I will not support a cut of PEPFAR, which is a program that has saved literally millions of lives and has been extremely effective and well run.” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and the chair of the spending panel, told reporters, referring to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that began under the George W Bush administration.
Senator Patty Murray, a Washington State Democrat, said in a statement that “Trump wants Congress to vote to cut off public radio broadcasts our constituents count on for weather forecasts, emergency alerts, and updates on what’s going on in their community—and force layoffs at local TV stations. And he wants us to rip away lifesaving humanitarian aid.”
Trump has challenged the entire premise of the spending law, saying the president has the constitutional power to withhold — or impound — funding for programs he disagrees with. During last year’s presidential campaign, he promised to challenge the law in court.
The package sent to Capitol Hill Tuesday would cancel funding for foreign aid grants in the US Agency for International Development’s budget as well as for smaller agencies targeted for closure by Trump like the US Institute of Peace.
It also would also eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR, entities which have long been targeted by conservatives for alleged liberal bias. Trump has derided the outlets as being unfavourable to him and a drain on taxpayer money.
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The public media outlets receive a small portion of their funding from federal sources in addition to dollars from sponsors and individual donors. The networks have said that smaller stations could close as a result of the cut.
Lawsuits filed regarding the dismantling of USAID and other agencies have alleged the actions violated the law and Congress’s underlying power of the purse.
The spending cut package was a key request of conservative lawmakers who reluctantly voted for a budget proposal to fast-track US$5.3 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. The budget requires just US$4 billion in cuts over a decade and some conservatives said they would only support the budget based on the promise of codifying DOGE cuts in the future.
