rescissions package Archives

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is signaling he could plunge the country into a partial government shutdown if Republicans move forward with rescinding just a fraction of a percent of government spending.

The Senate is expected to vote on a request from the White House to claw back $1.1 billion in public broadcasting funding and $8.3 billion in foreign aid next week. Schumer has threatened that Democrats will reject a government funding deal for the upcoming fiscal year if Republicans pass President Donald Trump’s $9.4 billion rescission package, which could trigger a partial government shutdown at the end of September.

“Ask the Republicans why they are heading on this path,” Schumer said at a Senate Democratic leadership press conference Wednesday in response to a question citing his previous warnings about the alleged harmful effects of letting government funding lapse. “We are doing everything we can to keep the bipartisan appropriations process going. And they’re undermining it with rescissions, with pocket rescissions, with impoundment and every other way.”

Schumer’s implicit shutdown threat is a noticeable departure from his decision to avert a lapse in government funding in March by supplying the votes to pass a Trump-backed stopgap spending bill. The Democratic leader’s decision to avoid a government shutdown earlier in the year infuriated the party’s base, leading Schumer to postpone a scheduled book tour. Elected Democrats across the country criticized his leadership.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune criticized Schumer’s recent remarks appearing to use the rescissions package as leverage in the anticipated government funding showdown later this year. Schumer wrote a “Dear Colleague” letter Tuesday warning of “consequences that will be felt far beyond the halls of power” if Republicans claw back funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

“I was disappointed to see the Democrat leader … implicitly threaten to shut down the government,” Thune said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “But I’m hopeful that that is not the position of the Democrat Party, the Democrat conference here in the Senate, and that we can work together in the coming weeks to pass bipartisan appropriations bills.”

“Funding the government is our chief priority before October, but that won’t stop us from considering additional measures,” Thune said, in an implicit reference to the rescissions package.

Thune is up against a July 18 deadline to pass the rescissions package, which is subject to a simple majority vote. Failure to approve the clawback request by that timeline would force the president to spend the money as originally directed by lawmakers.

The House cleared the clawback measure 214 to 212 in June with four GOP lawmakers joining Democrats in opposing the rescissions package.

Though several moderate Senate Republicans have voiced concerns about rescinding some of the proposed DOGE cuts, some in the conference are warning that failure is not an option and that Senate Republicans must meet the July 18 deadline. The $9.4 billion rescissions request would be the first DOGE cuts codified by Congress out of the roughly $175 billion identified by the president’s cost-cutting commission.

“I think if the Republicans in the United States Senate do not pass the rescission package, after all the rhetoric about reducing spending, then they should hide their head in the bag,” Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Tuesday. “And I think the White House will provide the bag.”

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Reporter

RELATED ARTICLES:

Democrat Senator Puts Out Anti-White, Anti-Male Job Listing

Democrat Operatives Dishonestly Try To Boost ‘Independent’ Senate Candidate To Take Down Republican

Theater Nerd Takes Trump Blame Game To Delusional Level

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Wednesday that the next agenda item on House Republicans’ calendar could be passing legislation aimed at slashing more government spending.

Johnson said Wednesday that House Republicans are “eager” to codify cuts to congressionally-appropriated funding made by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) following the House’s passage of the president’s “one big, beautiful bill” on May 22. The White House will send a $9.4 billion rescissions package to Congress to codify some of DOGE’s work as early as next Tuesday, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The rescissions package will include $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which partly funds the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in addition to an $8.3 billion spending reduction to foreign aid agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Though the cuts represent a small amount of discretionary spending, GOP lawmakers have sharply criticized these programs, alleging they have recklessly spent taxpayer money and propagated left-wing ideology.

Axios was first to report the White House’s plans to transmit the rescissions package to Congress.

Both chambers of Congress can pass the rescissions package by a simple majority vote, allowing GOP lawmakers to effectively bypass Democratic opposition. Once the White House sends the DOGE cuts to the House and Senate, lawmakers will have 45 days to vote on clawing back the funding.

Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will need virtually every Republican to get behind the rescission effort due to both conferences’ slim majorities.

“The House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand,” the House Speaker wrote on X Wednesday morning.

Johnson also argued that House Republicans’ passage of the president’s sweeping tax and spending package builds on DOGE’s work to eliminate wasteful spending. The bill notably achieves more than a $1.6 trillion decrease in mandatory spending over a ten-year period in part by reforming Medicaid and food assistance programs.

The House-drafted bill notably bars notably 1.4 million illegal migrants from receiving Medicaid coverage at the state level and implements work requirements that require certain able-bodied, childless adults to work or volunteer 20 hours a week in order to enroll in the program.

Codifying the DOGE cuts, on the other hand, would reduce discretionary spending, which Congress votes on every year through the appropriations process. Johnson said House Republicans will “swiftly implement” Trump’s budget request for the fiscal year 2026 process, which also outlined more than $160 billion in cuts to discretionary spending.

Musk, who recently announced a step back from overseeing DOGE, has conversely suggested that the deficit increases in the president’s landmark bill far outweigh the floated spending cuts and will add to the national debt over a ten-year window.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News in an interview that is slated to air in full Sunday.

Both Trump administration officials and congressional proponents of the president’s legislation have panned this view, arguing that a combination of economic growth generated by the bill’s tax cut provisions and undoing Biden-era regulations will shrink budget deficits.

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has championed clawing back funding through her purview on a DOGE-focused House oversight panel, said Wednesday that the initial rescissions package should be one of many that House Republicans ultimately pass.

“Personally I want to pass DOGE cuts every single week until the bloated out of control government is reigned back in,” Greene wrote on X. “As a country, we cannot survive our national debt and honestly, we may be past the point of return. We should be aggressively attacking our debt and aggressively, cutting all waste fraud, and abuse and unnecessary programs.”

“Our future literally is in peril,” Greene added.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the confirmation from the White House Office of Management and Budget.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Congressional Reporter.

Tag Archive for: rescissions package

Adam Pack

Adam Pack