Senate clears amended bill to claw back billions in foreign aid and public media funding

Shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday morning, the Senate passed legislation that would rescind $9 billion in government funding that Congress previously approved. 

The Rescission Act of 2025 (H.R. 4) now heads to the House, which passed an earlier iteration of the bill. That chamber has until the end of day Friday to clear the measure and, according to its schedule, is planning to take it up Thursday. 

Senators made numerous changes to the legislation, which targets funding for foreign assistance programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most notably, they removed a $400 million cut to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). 

Prior to final passage, Senate Democrats offered a little more than a dozen amendments to make further changes, but they were rejected. 

The Senate ultimately passed the bill in a 51-48 vote with moderates Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joining Democrats in opposition. Collins, who is the Appropriations Committee chair, said the Trump administration has not been forthcoming about what specific programs would be cut. 

“The sparse text that was sent to Congress [by the Office of Management and Budget] included very little detail and does not give an accounting of the specific program cuts that would total $9.4 billion,” she said in a Tuesday statement. “For example, there are $2.5 billion in cuts to the Development Assistance account, which covers everything from basic education, to water and sanitation, to food security — but we don’t know how those programs will be affected.” 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued on the Senate floor Wednesday that the bill would slash waste, fraud and abuse. 

“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending. And now it’s time for the Senate to do its part to cut some of that waste out of the budget,” he said. “It’s a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”

Appropriations vice chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., warned her Republican colleagues that passing rescissions would undermine the bipartisan support required to approve annual government funding bills.  

“We have never, never before seen bipartisan investments, slashed through a partisan rescissions package. Do not start now. Not when we are working, at this very moment, in a bipartisan way to pass our spending bills,” she said in floor remarks Wednesday. “As I said earlier, bipartisanship doesn’t end with any one line being crossed, it erodes, it breaks down bit by bit, until one day there is nothing left.”