WASHINGTON: US Republicans early on Friday (Jul 18) approved President Donald Trump’s plan to cancel US$9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, vowing it was just the start of broader efforts by Congress to slash the federal budget.
The cuts achieve only a tiny fraction of the US$1 trillion in annual savings that tech billionaire and estranged Trump donor Elon Musk vowed to find before his acrimonious exit in May from a role spearheading federal cost-cutting.
But Republicans – who recently passed a domestic policy bill expected to add more than US$3 trillion to US debt – said the vote honoured Trump’s election campaign pledge to rein in runaway spending.
“President Trump and House Republicans promised fiscal responsibility and government efficiency,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement just after the vote.
“Today, we’re once again delivering on that promise.”
Both chambers of Congress are Republican-controlled, meaning a mostly party-line House of Representatives vote of 216 to 213, moments after midnight, was sufficient to approve the Senate-passed measure.
The bill now heads to the White House to be signed by Trump, who praised his backers in the House.
“REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED… BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.me
Most of the cuts target programmes for countries hit by disease, war and natural disasters. But the move also scraps US$1.1 billion that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.
Conservatives say the funding – which goes mostly to more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, as well as to public broadcasters NPR and PBS – is unnecessary and has funded biased coverage.
The bill originally included US$400 million in cuts to a global AIDS programme that is credited with saving 26 million lives, but that funding was saved by a rebellion by moderate Republicans.
