The House voted on Wednesday to consider a bill to rescind $9.4 billion in funding for National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The bill does not focus on whether to approve new dollars, but is instead a clawback of money that was previously approved, a move known as rescission.
The vote was 213-207, along partisan lines with all yes votes cast by Republicans and all but one no votes cast by Democrats (Kentucky’s Thomas Massie was the sole Republican voting no). Twelve representatives did not vote.
Authority and Processes
Rescission bills allow Congress to reverse a part of the federal budget that has already been passed. The authority for rescissions is found in the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA), passed in response to President Nixon’s contenti0n that he could authorize or withhold funds as he wanted. Congress subsequently amended the Antideficiency Act, creating two categories of authority under the ICA: deferrals (temporary delays in spending) and rescissions (cancellations of spending). The ICA also established the process and procedures for both.
While either members of Congress or the President can formally propose rescission, traditionally, such bills start in the White House. When the President sends a rescission proposal to Congress, the clock starts running, and Congress has 45 legislative days to act. While Congress considers the bill, spending can be temporarily halted.
To move forward, a rescission bill requires a simple majority vote in both the House and Senate. If the bill is voted down, or if Congress doesn’t act within the 45 days, the rescission fails, and the funds are again available for use.
The Current Proposal
The White House has proposed $9.4 billion in total cuts. That translates into a $8.3 billion cut from USAID and $1.07 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds NPR and PBS. Those funds had previously been approved through September 2027.
The clock started ticking on June 3, which is when the White House officially transmitted the rescission package. On May 1, the President signaled that he would be seeking to slash funding for NPR and PBS when he signed an executive order cutting federal funding and directing the CPB to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS,” which the President said was consistent with his administration’s policy “to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” In addition, the President directed the CPB Board to decline to provide future funding and to “cease indirect funding to NPR and PBS, including by ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”
PBS is not primarily funded through federal tax dollars—only about 15% of its budget comes from the federal government. It’s largely supported by, well, viewers like you. Almost 60% of funding for public television comes from private donors or grants. Dues paid by member stations provide additional funding.
NPR gets about 1 % of its budget from Congress.
Cuts to USAID had already been dramatic under Elon Musk’s stint as the head of the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). One of DOGE’s first moves was to shutter USAID offices and cut spending, tacks that were ruled unconstitutional in March of this year. DOGE had been seeking to slash billions more from the agency, and some view the rescission bill (which attacks only a fraction of the cuts) as tiptoeing towards more retroactive cuts. USAID was previously and independent federal agency, but in an effort to dismantle it, the administration has been moved under the State Department.
What Comes Next
The House plans to vote on the final bill today.
The bill will also be considered in the Senate, where it is expected to pass, again along party lines. This is true despite the fact that Republicans hold a slim majority of 53 votes. Only two Republican Senators, however, have publicly opposed the cuts: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R‑Alaska).
Collins specifically opposes cuts to USAID funding for healthcare programs under PEPFAR, United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program proposed President George Bush in 2003. The work has garnered bipartisan support: in 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the PEPFAR Extension Act of 2018 provided support to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria through 2023.
Murkowski doesn’t want to pull support from the CPB. According to PBS, 58% of all US television households (over 130 million people) tune into PBS member stations and a hefty 60% of the audience still lives in rural communities. In rural, Native American, and island communities, public broadcasting stations are often the only locally owned and operated media outlets, and how many Americans get their news (you may recall that when I traveled to Alaska to prepare taxes, our arrival was announced by public radio, the primary news source in the villages).
History
Most rescission efforts fail in the Senate, largely because of concerns over undoing the work of previous administrations. The current Congress doesn’t appear to have those same reservations.
The largest rescission in modern history happened in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan proposed $15 billion in cuts—Congress approved some of those cuts. Nearly four decades later, President Trump proposed the same amount of cuts in his first term. The House passed the bill, but the Senate did not vote, causing it to fail.
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