Senate Republicans are set to consider a multibillion-dollar package of cuts from the White House, but the top Senate Democrat warned that doing so could have consequences for a later government funding showdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned on Tuesday that the Senate GOP’s plan to move forward with a $9.4 billion rescissions package would have ‘grave implications’ on Congress, particularly the forthcoming government funding fight in September.
‘Republicans’ passage of this purely partisan proposal would be an affront to the bipartisan appropriations process,’ Schumer wrote in a letter to fellow Senate Democrats.
‘That’s why a number of Senate Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes,’ he continued.
The rescissions package, proposed by the Impoundment Control Act, allows the White House to request that Congress roll back congressionally appropriated funding. Such proposed cuts must be approved by both chambers within 45 days.
This package in particular, which narrowly squeaked through the House by a two-vote margin last month, would claw back $8.3 billion in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.
The package, informed heavily by the cuts proposed by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, formerly helmed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, would only need to pass a simple majority in the upper chamber to pass.
Musk and DOGE made USAID a primary target of their hunt for waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, dismantling much of the long-standing organization ahead of the rescission request.
The impending deadline to fund the government in September will either require the passage of a dozen appropriations bills – something Congress has not done in years – or the need to work with Democrats to crest the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
And the rescissions package is not wildly popular among Republicans.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said during a hearing on the package late last month that she was concerned about proposed cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the CPB, and warned that cuts to the AIDS and HIV prevention program would be ‘extraordinarily ill-advised and shortsighted.’
Schumer is no stranger to trying to leverage government funding fights to his advantage. Earlier this year, he withheld support for the House GOP-authored government funding extension before ultimately agreeing to the deal.
That same scenario could play out once more come September.
‘This is beyond a bait-and-switch – it is a bait-and-poison-to-kill,’ Schumer said. ‘Senate Republicans must reject this partisan path and instead work with Democrats on a bipartisan appropriations process.’