Senate weighs amendments to foreign aid, public media funding cuts

Washington — The Senate kicked off another lengthy vote series Wednesday afternoon as Congress works to deliver on President Trump's request to rescind $9 billion in spending by Friday. The "vote-a-rama" continued into the overnight hours.

The Senate narrowly advanced the request late Tuesday. Three Republicans opposed the package and Vice President JD Vance had to cast the two tie-breaking votes to move it forward.

The House approved the original $9.4 billion rescissions request last month, but it has faced pushback in the Senate, where some Republicans have opposed slashing foreign aid and public broadcasting funding.

Both chambers need to approve the request before it expires at the end of the week, or the funds will have to be spent as lawmakers previously intended. The Senate's decision to consider amendments to the package means the House will need to approve the final Senate version.

The rescissions request targets roughly $8 billion for foreign assistance programs, including the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. The package also includes about $1 billion in cuts for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public radio and television stations, including NPR and PBS.

Senate Republicans met with Mr. Trump's budget director, Russell Vought, on Tuesday as GOP leaders worked to get holdouts on board ahead of the procedural votes later in the day. Vought left the meeting saying there would be a substitute amendment that would eliminate $400 million in cuts to an AIDS prevention program, one of the main concerns of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said he hoped the House would accept the "small modification."

When asked about the $400 million change, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters, "we wanted them to pass it unaltered like we did."

"We need to claw back funding, and we'll do as much as we're able," Johnson added.

But the change did not satisfy Collins, who voted against advancing the package. Collins was joined by two other Republicans senators: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The holdouts said the administration's request lacks details about how the cuts will be implemented.

"To carry out our Constitutional responsibility, we should know exactly what programs are affected and the consequences of rescissions," Collins said in a statement Tuesday.

In a floor speech ahead of the procedural votes, Murkowski also said Congress should not give up its budget oversight.

"I don't want us to go from one reconciliation bill to a rescissions package to another rescissions package to a reconciliation package to a continuing resolution," she said. "We're lawmakers. We should be legislating. What we're getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, 'This is the priority, we want you to execute on it, we'll be back with you with another round.' I don't accept that."

Cuts to local radio and television stations, especially in rural areas where they are critical for communicating emergency messages, was another point of contention in the Senate. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who had concerns about the cuts, said funding would be reallocated from climate funds to keep stations in tribal areas operating "without interruption."

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he would vote for the package, but expected that Congress would later have to try to fix some of the cuts once they determine the impacts.

"I suspect we're going to find out there are some things that we're going to regret," he said Wednesday on the Senate floor. "I suspect that when we do we'll have to come back and fix it, similar to what I'm trying to do with the bill I voted against a couple of weeks ago — the so-called big, beautiful bill, that I think we're going to have to go back and work on."

Jaala Brown contributed to this report.