After a dozen vulnerable Republicans spent days hand-wringing over whether they would support $9.4 billion in Department of Government Efficiency cuts to international aid and public broadcasting, they caved on Thursday.
House Republicans voted largely along party lines to pass the measure, 214-212, with four Republicans joining every Democrat in voting against the legislation.
A group of more moderate House Republicans had been complaining about codifying some of these DOGE cuts, including $7.4 billion in international aid programs like the U.S. Agency for International Development, $1.1 billion in public broadcasting and $9 million from President George W. Bush’s legacy HIV-AIDS relief program, known as PEPFAR. Those had all been generally popular programs within the GOP until Elon Musk took his chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy.