The Senate agreed in the early hours of Thursday to accept more than $9 billion sent back by the Trump administration after it had already been appropriated by Congress. Even after the 51-48 vote, most GOP senators couldn’t tell you exactly which programs the legislation (known as a “rescissions package”) would defund. And the fallout could extend to one of just two Republicans to vote against the bill: Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chair of the Appropriations Committee.#CryptoMarket4T
e know that the legislation zeroes out $1.1 billion funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over the next two years, prompting a crisis at NPR and PBS stations around the country. We also know that the package targets a wide array of foreign aid spending worth roughly $8 billion. And we know that Senate Republicans have now made a government shutdown this fall much, much more likely.#GENIUSAct
To illustrate the murkiness around this legislation, let’s start with (what seems to be) its thin silver lining: The final version of the bill included an amendment to save the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program from being axed. At least, we’re pretty sure PEPAR has been saved, because the details about how the cuts the Senate approved will be implemented are still unclear. The Office of Management and Budget sent over a very sparse memo to Congress requesting the rescission and refused to give lawmakers a breakdown of exactly which programs at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development the rescissions would be affected. Determining what falls under broad categories like “international disaster aid” will be up to Office of Management and Budget staffers rather than the legislators who first appropriated the money now being returned.#PowellVsTrump