America's Talking - House Delivers Trump Another Win, Passing $9 Billion Spending Cut Bill

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

(The Center Square) – The U.S. House in a late night vote passed Republicans’ $9 billion rescissions package, delivering another win for President Donald Trump and his promise to cut federal spending. The measure, which cuts already appropriated federal spending on some foreign aid projects and public broadcasting programs, passed 216-213 in the House, the final voted needed to send it to Trump's desk for his signature. Two Republicans – U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio, joined all Democrats in voting against the measure. Originally clawing back a total of $9.4 billion, the package now revokes roughly $7.9 billion in “woke” foreign aid programs and $1.1 billion meant to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR, PBS and some radio stations.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0cb0c42e-56a3-4e84-9c7c-efae2f14222e.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, chief content officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered another victory for President Donald Trump early Friday as a Republican-controlled House passed a measure cutting $9 billion in spending that Congress previously approved. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Teres Boudreau. Therese, between the continuing resolutions that Congress delivered just before the July 4th holiday, and now this so-called rescissions package, there have been some late nights and close votes in both the Senate and the House, but they have all gone Trump's way so far. Tell us more about this spending cut bill that the House passed just after midnight Friday.

Yes, so it was a long process. It only rescinded about $9 billion, but it costs a lot. You think that that's not really. really, you know, a lot, but it actually did cause some controversy. So most of about 8 billion of the cuts were for foreign aid programs. And that actually, there was a lot of Republican lawmakers even who were concerned about that. Office of Management and Budget, they're the ones who crafted the package. They said, this is just going to cut, you know, extra or woke. You know, they said things. So they listed, you know, there were, you know,

millions for, you know, condoms in Zambia or electric buses in Rwanda or, you know, pride parades and gender studies and things like that in different countries. And so Trump administration was saying, we don't need these. We're going to cut them. But some Republicans were concerned about PEPFAR, the Global AIDS Prevention Program. And so that caused some controversy. And then the other roughly billion that was in that package was for, uh, broadcasting stations. So that includes PBS, NPR, and then also some local and rural radio stations will probably be affected as well. And so some lawmakers were saying, well, you know, this might impact emergency storm relief efforts, you know, when everything else has gone offline, but we still have

the radios. You know, if we were send this funding, then, you know, they might not be able to still operate. So there was some controversy there. Again, nine, nine, nine. $9.4 billion later got knocked down to $9 billion because they excluded the PEPFAR rescissions. It doesn't, it's not that much in all things, all things considered. I mean, for the average person, be a lot, but for the government, it's not that much. But, you know, even that was difficult for, for Congress to pass. There were a lot of fiscal hawks who were happy, obviously, but, you know, it was still controversial. President Trump essentially said these cuts are related to woke funding.

particularly on the foreign aid funding. And this goes all the way back to the beginning of President Trump's term when he wanted to dismantle U.S. aid when the Department of Government Efficiency previously led by Elon Musk, of course, President Trump and Elon have had a falling out since then. But that funding has been targeted pretty much since day one. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's true. There was a lot of Trump advisors and people saying that this,

is the first step in cutting out the waste fraud and abuse in government. House Speaker Mike Johnson said that this rescission's package will be the first of many. So they want to keep doing this. They want to keep targeting different spending that's already been appropriated. Well, for the rescissions package, this is spending. It's already been appropriated. But it hasn't been spent yet. And they had a certain timeline so they could rescind it.

So it's unclear whether they can do that again because, I think that the time to rescind 2025, fiscal year 2025 funding has passed. So they're probably referencing them doing it for the future. And so a lot of Democrats are saying, well, why should we negotiate with you on the fiscal year 2026 funding bills if you're just going to rescind them? Because again, remember, rescissions packages only require a majority vote in the Senate, whereas the government funding bills, which they're going to be working on soon, require 60 votes. So it's easier to rescind a certain funding than it is to appropriate it.

And so Democrats like Chuck Schumer are saying, why should we work with you if you're going to make all these compromises and it's going to be this bipartisan process. But you say that it's the first of many recisions packages. So you might just bait and switch, you know. So it's going to be interesting because Democrats are not happy. And some of them have even said that they're going to force a government shutdown, meaning they won't vote for any of the 12 annual preparations bills that fund the government because they don't want to see another rescissions package happen. So that's something definitely to watch for. And all of these votes, the continuing resolutions that happened earlier this month,

this rescission package is related to funding the government through the end of this fiscal year, which ends September 30th. So despite all this work by Congress over the last few months, they've got to turn around again and work on next fiscal year's budget, which begins October 1st. That's not a whole lot of time. Yeah, no, that's true. And that's, there really is a squeeze there because the House goes off in August for their recess. And they have, I believe, this week, they're voted on the defense, the appropriations bill funding defense, the Department of Defense and other things like that. I think they voted on that yesterday and then they had passed the Veterans Affairs bill. So that's only two of 12 that are ready for the Senate to work on.

And the House is going away soon. And by the time they get back, there's only going to be a few weeks for them to do all of us. They have to get all the 12 bills through committee. and then they have to vote on them on the floor, and then they have to send them to the Senate so the Senate can approve them. Only once all those, all 12 of those, pass both the House and the Senate, can the government be funded?

So they have to do that before September 30th, and a lot of people are saying, we don't know if they're going to be able to do that. And so that might set us up for either a government, partial government shutdown or another continuing resolution. And that would be, that would not be something I don't think anybody would want, because they've already done a continuing resolution

to keep the government funding on cruise control essentially three times over. They never even passed or crafted the 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2025. They just kept the funding on cruise control with three continuing resolutions from fiscal year 2024. So a fourth continuing resolution really is not a good option that anyone wants,

but again, at the rate that things are going, if Democrats are going to continue to give in because of this rescissions bill that passed or other things, we might see that. It really just depends. Terrez, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.