It marks the first time in decades that a rescissions package has been approved by the Senate. In 2018, the GOP-controlled chamber narrowly blocked a $15 billion request from Trump, after Collins and then-Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina opposed it.
Even though Trump was successful now, however, there was still plenty of drama. To help address a swath of GOP concerns, the administration agreed to drop a $400 million cut to the global AIDS fighting program, PEPFAR, from the original, $9.4 billion proposal. That brought the Senate GOP bill down to roughly $9 billion.
Republicans added language vowing that other areas related to food aid, maternal health, malaria and tuberculosis wouldn’t be impacted and that certain food assistance programs would be protected.The administration also privately vowed to move around other funding to help offset funding cuts to rural public news stations to win over Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D).
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As part of their roughly 12 hour marathon voting session, Republicans also defeated attempts by Democrats, and some of their GOP colleagues, to strip out spending cuts to global health funds, public broadcasting and international disasters. GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Collins and Murkowski supported some of these amendments, but they needed more Republicans to join them.
Not enough of them did. And McConnell, who had been viewed as likely to oppose the rescissions package, ultimately voted for it on final passage.
Murkowski offered one doomed amendment that would have restored most of the money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which largely funds PBS and NPR. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) put forward another amendment originally authored by Collins that would have further reduced the size of the clawback from $9 billion to $6.5 billion.
Collins had decided not to offer that amendment herself over questions about whether it would sink the overall bill —and compel the Senate to revert back to original plans to cut $9.4 billion in previously-approved federal funding, which she opposes even more.
Yet even as most Republicans voted for the package, several did so only after voicing their displeasure. Though White House budget director Russ Vought provided a “matrix” of accounts that would be impacted in the closed door Senate lunch, Republicans remained widely frustrated with the Office of Management and Budget, which they felt had not provided sufficient details about the scope of the funding cuts on the table.
“Let's not consider this a precedent,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who said he was supporting the bill “with reservation.”
Wicker added, from the chamber floor, “if you come back to us again, Mr. Director of the OMB — if you come back to us again from the executive branch — give us the specific amounts and the specific programs that will be cut.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), hours before voting for the package, said, “I suspect we're going to find out there are some things that we're going to regret. … And I suspect that when we do we'll have to come back and fix it.”
