The Senate Could Be Short on Time — and Votes — to Pass DOGE Cuts

“I personally oppose the cuts on PEPFAR,” Appropriations Chair Susan Collins said of a popular HIV-AIDS relief program.

Susan Collins

Sen. Susan Collins speaks with reporters at the Capitol. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

As Republican senators race to advance their massive reconciliation bill before July 4, the deadline for another one of President Donald Trump’s controversial legislative priorities is sneaking up on them — and it might not have the votes to pass.

The Senate is considering a package that would codify $9.4 billion in Department of Government Efficiency cuts. The legislation — which narrowly passed in the House June 12 — includes cuts like $7.4 billion in international aid programs such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, $1.1 billion in public broadcasting and millions from President George W. Bush’s legacy HIV-AIDS relief program, known as PEPFAR.

For procedural reasons, the Senate must pass the legislation, known as a rescission bill, by July 18, which marks 45 days after the Trump White House sent its request to claw back the funds to Congress.

But, for now, the Senate is preoccupied.

When NOTUS asked Sen. Jerry Moran whether he would support the rescission bill on Wednesday, the Kansas Republican succinctly — and unintentionally — summed up the problem in a question: “How have you moved on from reconciliation?”

Moran is right that reconciliation has sucked up much of the legislative oxygen in the Senate, with reporters literally tripping over each other last week to decipher whether Republicans have the votes for sweeping changes to the Medicaid and tax provisions in the reconciliation bill.

In the meantime, Moran told NOTUS, he hasn’t given the rescission legislation much thought — yet.

Moran will be a Republican worth watching as the upper chamber ultimately turns its attention to the package. He voted for PEPFAR as a member of the House in 2003, and during the first Trump administration, he was a vocal defender of USAID.

“I certainly care a lot about food aid,” Moran said. “So this is of interest to me.”

Moran is not alone in his historical support for international development programs. Sending aid used to be a mainstay of the GOP’s foreign policy agenda — that is, before a so-called “America First” movement that shuns sending U.S. funding abroad took root within the Trump administration.

Still, a handful of senators predate that movement. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley were senators in 2003 and voted for PEPFAR. As did Sens. Roger Wicker, Marsha Blackburn, John Boozman and Shelley Moore Capito when they were members of the House.

These senators very well may vote to enshrine cuts to PEPFAR and other foreign aid programs — if the House vote is any indication, they probably will. But passage is also not a given, as plenty of Republican senators left the door open to voting against, or amending, the bill.

Even Majority Leader John Thune said he expects the bill “could be” tweaked in the Senate.

“I’m looking forward to listening and seeing why they’re considering cutting something that really hasn’t been increased in several years,” Boozman told NOTUS.

“I’ve been very supportive of it in the past,” he said of PEPFAR, “but I have concerns.”

Democrats could seize on those concerns to make the amendment process difficult for Senate Republicans.

Under the rules allowing for special consideration of a rescission bill — the same rules that allow the Senate to pass the measure with a simple majority — any germane amendment to the bill gets a vote. Democrats could chew up valuable Senate floor time by subjecting the legislation to a lengthy amendment process, and in doing so, they could also subject Republicans to some tough votes.

If Democrats succeed in amending the bill, they also would subject the legislation to another difficult floor vote in the House — with the clock ticking down to the July 18 deadline.

The first vote in the House wasn’t easy. Speaker Mike Johnson had to make unrelated promises on the floor to lawmakers like Rep. Nick LaLota that the state and local tax deduction in the reconciliation bill would not significantly change from the House version — all while vulnerable Republicans like Rep. Young Kim waited by GOP leaders and floor staff to see if there was enough wiggle room for her to vote “no.”

There wasn’t.

Dozens of uneasy House moderate Republicans ultimately had to swallow the PEPFAR and foreign aid cuts after claiming they secured assurances from the Office of Management and Budget and House GOP leadership that the legislation would not slash medical treatments. Republican leaders claimed the legislation would simply eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in the programs.

That commitment was enough for lawmakers like moderate Rep. Don Bacon, who had expressed concerns before backing the bill. The same talking point appears to be gaining steam in the Senate.

“It preserves the funding for PEPFAR that’s needed,” Sen. Ron Johnson told NOTUS.

Other Republicans sounded less worried about the program’s long-term viability, focusing more on the fiscal upside of slashing federal spending.

“I hope we can pass it,” Sen. Tim Sheehy told NOTUS. “If we can’t cut $9 billion as a Congress, how the hell are we going to get to a point where we have a balanced budget?”

“I would love to fund free media and free health care — all of these great things,” Sheehy continued. “But in reality, just do the math, we’re not in a fiscal position to do that.”

Key Senate moderates aren’t entirely convinced.

“I personally oppose the cuts on PEPFAR,” Sen. Susan Collins told NOTUS.

Collins poses a problem for the bill’s Senate prospects. The powerful Senate Appropriations Committee chair will have tremendous influence over the legislation’s trajectory in the coming weeks, with discretion over whether her panel will make changes to the bill in a markup, which would necessitate another contentious vote in the House.

There’s also the matter of Collins voting “no.” If all Democrats, as expected, oppose the bill, Thune can only afford to lose three Republicans, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie in the Senate.

Collins is hosting OMB Director Russell Vought on Wednesday for a hearing, where he is sure to take pointed questions from Republican senators about the foreign aid and public broadcasting provisions.

Sens. Mike Rounds and Lisa Murkowski both sit on the panel and have raised concerns about their South Dakota and Alaska constituents losing access to trusted news sources.

“While I share the desire to reduce government spending,” Murkowski wrote in an op-ed last month, “defunding the [Corporation for Public Broadcasting], and particularly the essential reporting it allows locally owned radio and television stations to provide in Alaska, is not the place to start.”

Murkowski and Rounds likely won’t find many allies in the Senate, especially as Trump’s penchant for taking shots at the media becomes the norm in the GOP.

“Public broadcasting became, basically, a political weapon for the Democrats and radical liberals,” Sen. Roger Marshall told NOTUS. “So why would the federal government be funding political rhetoric?”

But it only takes a few more Republicans with pet concerns to stitch together an opposition powerful enough to tank the bill — or, at least, cause a massive headache for Thune as the July 18 deadline approaches.

“I haven’t looked at the rescission package,” Capito, a member of Senate GOP leadership, told NOTUS. “I’m not going to comment on that.”

“Let me get through this one first,” she said, referencing reconciliation.


Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Daniella Diaz, who is a reporter at NOTUS, and Emily Kennard and Samuel Larreal, who are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows, contributed to this report.