House Republicans greenlighted the first series of funding cuts recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the $9 billion batch of rescissions heading to President Trump’s desk for signing.
The lower chamber approved the cuts, which claw back the federal funding for both public broadcasting and foreign aid, in a 216-213 late Thursday night vote.
Nearly all House Republicans voted for the package, with the exception of two. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Mike Turner (Ohio) joined with all Democrats to oppose the DOGE cuts.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) took a victory lap following its passage — after controversy around the Trump administration’s handling of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein held up the vote.
“The Republican Party and President Trump and everybody that works on our side have promised fiscal responsibility and fiscal discipline and we’re delivering on those promises again tonight,” Johnson told reporters following the vote.
“I’m delighted to send that over to the president’s desk for signature and he’ll sign that quickly,” he added.
The Senate passed the recissions package early Thursday morning in a 51-48 vote, handing another legislative victory to Trump, who has vowed the shrink the scope of the federal government.
Two Republican senators also joined Democrats in opposing the measure: Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).
Collins, a moderate Republican, has previously expressed concerns on how the cuts would be implemented, worries she related to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought during a Tuesday lunch meeting.
Sen. Majority Leader John Thune, prior to the House’s final vote, called the Senate-passed package “a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”
The first recissions package — as Vought indicated Thursday that more are in the works —contains cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration has heavily targeted. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the formal end of its operations earlier this month.
The measure also features claw backs aimed at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR — two news outlets that conservatives, including the president, have argued are biased in their coverage and should not be funded by the federal government.
