Washington — President Trump signed legislation to claw back $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding, the first time in decades that Congress has approved a president’s request to rescind previously approved funding.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Thursday that the package was “officially signed.”
Both the Senate and House passed the legislation, known as a rescissions request, in overnight votes last week before a July 18 deadline. Each chamber ran into different hurdles in getting it over the finish line ahead of the deadline, after which the funds would have had to be spent as Congress originally intended.
The bill 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 funding cuts for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports public radio and television stations, including NPR and PBS.
Though all but two Republican senators ended up supporting final passage in the upper chamber, some said they had reservations about doing so, especially because they had not received details from the administration about how the broader cuts would impact specific programs.
Two major points of contention were funding for a global AIDS prevention program and radio and broadcast stations in rural and tribal areas, which play a critical role in communicating emergency alerts and other information to residents.
The final version of the package removed $400 million in cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR, in an effort to appease some critics. The administration promised to find funding elsewhere to alleviate the cuts to the rural stations to win over others.
Two House Republicans also opposed its passage in the lower chamber.
Republicans said they expect it will be the first of multiple packages to claw back funding that they have characterized as “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Any future request is sure to spark another battle with lawmakers, some of whom have criticized the legislative body for giving up its budget oversight and ceding to the president’s demands.
