Congress Set to Pass $9B in DOGE Cuts, Handing Trump Another Win

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By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Good evening. President Donald Trump is on the verge of another legislative victory, though a planned House vote on his request to claw back billions in spending was delayed today by an unrelated matter: GOP divisions over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Here's your fiscal update.

Congress Set to Pass $9B in DOGE Cuts, Handing Trump Another Win

The House appears set to pass a $9 billion package of DOGE spending cuts ahead of a Friday deadline, canceling money that Congress had previously approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. But a fight among House Republicans over how to handle calls for the release of information pertaining to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein delayed a final vote on the cuts.

The Senate passed the rescissions package shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday, following some 12 hours of votes on amendments. The final package stripped out $400 million in cuts to PEPFAR, the global AIDS-prevention program. But Democratic efforts to strip $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS, were blocked by Republicans.

The 51-48 Senate vote on the amended bill saw two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, join with Democrats in opposing the cuts. Democratic Sen. Tina Smith did not vote after falling ill and being admitted to the hospital on Wednesday.

Collins, the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, complained that the White House Office of Management and Budget hadn't provided the customary level of detail about the requested cuts. "The rescissions package has a big problem - nobody really knows what program reductions are in it," she said in a statement Tuesday. "That isn't because we haven't had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that OMB has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process."

Other Republicans expressed concerns about the cuts but backed the White House anyway. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said that, in an ideal world, the cuts in this rescissions package would be as detailed as the last successful presidential rescissions, which passed in 1992. "I suspect we're going to find out there are some things that we're going to regret, some second and third order effects, and I suspect that when we do, we'll have to come back and fix them," Tillis said in remarks on the Senate floor. "We have no earthly idea what specific cuts will occur, but I'm willing to give OMB and the president the benefit of the doubt that they're going to be responsible cuts."

Why it matters, part 1: The cuts to foreign aid programs and public broadcasting could have wide-ranging effects. While Republicans said they were eliminating "woke" and "wasteful" spending, Democrats warned that bipartisan foreign policy objectives would be hurt along with more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations, costing jobs and potentially jeopardizing the ability to deliver emergency alerts to certain communities.

Why it matters, part 2: Beyond that, both Republicans and Democrats also spoke about this rescissions package as having implications for the federal budget and appropriations process. Republicans see it as the first of several bills to cut even more spending. Democrats, meanwhile, warn that the cuts undermine the annual funding process. They say they have little reason to work with Republicans on bipartisan spending bills if the GOP will just come back to pass partisan cuts. While rescissions bills can pass with a simple majority, annual spending measures to fund the government past September require 60 votes in the Senate, meaning that Democratic support will be needed.

"It is no secret the path to advancing more of our bills is going to be harder because of the unprecedented, partisan rescissions bill that Republicans just passed," Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democratic appropriator, said Thursday. "It is extremely frustrating to see so many of the colleagues that have worked with us to pass funding bills turn around and vote to rip away the funding that we all agreed on."

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, a Republican, acknowledged to reporters this week that repeated use of rescissions could be risky. He said they may "destroy a certain amount of goodwill that I think cost you down the road if you do it too much."

Vought pushes for partisanship: White House Budget Director Russell Vought isn't all that concerned about bipartisanship in the government funding process. "The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan," he said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor event, according to Politico.

"It's not going to keep me up at night, and I think will lead to better results, by having the appropriations process be a little bit partisan, and I don't think it's necessarily leading to a shutdown," he added.

Vought reportedly did not explain how partisan spending bills might get through the Senate without Democratic votes. And he refused to commit to abiding by any bipartisan spending deals or avoiding rescissions requests on future appropriations.

"We are willing to send up additional rescissions," Vought said. "I think if this continues to pass, we're likely to send up another rescissions package that would come soon, and we'll be working on that to try to get that across the finish line."

Murray criticized Vought and said her Senate colleagues would have to decide whether they agree with his push for a more partisan approach, which she said would be less effective.

"This is the budget chief who ignores our laws and he rubs it in our faces. He does not respect the role of this committee or any appropriator here, Republican or Democrat," she said. "So I do hope we can stand together and stand for our communities and stand up for Congress as a co-equal branch of this government."

The bottom line: Passage of the rescissions package is another win for Trump as he nears the six-month mark of his second term. Fiscal hawks in the GOP may celebrate the spending cuts codifying DOGE's work, but the $9 billion in savings pales in comparison to the $4 trillion in higher deficits expected to result from Trump's big bill.

Trump's Freeze on Education Funds Gets Pushback From GOP Senators

A group of Republican senators has asked the White House to release funds already appropriated by Congress for state-level educational programs - funds that are being withheld due to concerns that they promote a "radical left-wing agenda."

In a letter dated Wednesday, 10 Republican senators led by Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia asked Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to "faithfully implement" the funding bill passed by Congress for 2025, "including the education formula funds that states anticipated receiving on July 1, 2025."

The senators said they share Vought's concern "about taxpayer money going to fund radical left-wing programs," but claimed that the specific funds in question would not be used that way.

"These funds go to support programs that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies," the senators wrote.

The lawmakers added that, in their view, the decision to hold the money back was contrary to President Trump's stated goal of "returning K-12 education to the states."

An important source: Federal appropriations for local education programs play an important role in state budgets, and a coalition of 24 states sued the Trump administration earlier this week to release more than $6 billion in grants for K-12 and adult education programs that have been withheld pending review by the Education Department. States expected to receive those funds at the beginning of July.

"With no rhyme or reason, the Trump Administration abruptly froze billions of dollars in education funding just weeks before the start of the school year," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said while discussing the lawsuit Monday.

As congressional reporter Jamie Dupree notes, schools in the South will likely feel the pinch first, since they tend to start earlier than schools in the North, some as early as this month. Looming budget losses for states include $201 million in Georgia, $347 million in Florida and $84 million in Missouri.

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said that if the funding freeze continues, it will hit his state hard. "This will mean cuts in after-school programs, STEM education, adult literacy classes, mental health services for students, and will trigger higher class sizes in grades K through three," he said. "It could also mean laying off 1,000 educators."

Number of the Day: $31.5 Billion

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a House panel on Wednesday that an overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system would cost about $10 billion more than he estimated just last month. "We are going to need more money from the Congress," Duffy said at a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "We're talking $31.5 billion to do the full project."

The massive reconciliation package Republicans recently passed provided an initial $12.5 billion over five years for air traffic control. Duffy had said last month that the project would cost at least $20 billion.

The Federal Aviation Administration "wants to purchase new radios and network connections, replace 618 radar systems and install anti-collision tarmac technology at 200 airports," Reuters reports. The agency is reportedly also about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels.

Only About 25% of US Adults Say Trump's Policies Have Helped Them

Most Americans have a negative view of President Trump's policies and performance, according to new polling from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

According to poll results released Wednesday, more Americans said Trump's policies have hurt them than helped them, with 49% of respondents picking the former option and just 27% choosing the latter. Another 22% said the policies haven't made a difference either way.

The results varied by race, although more people in each racial category chose the "hurt" option. While 70% of Black respondents and 62% of Hispanic respondents said Trump's policies have done more to hurt them, that number fell to 41% for white adults. In all cases, though, the negative number outweighed the positive number, with just 9% of Black adults, 19% of Hispanic adults and 35% of white adults saying Trump's policies had helped them.

Negative views of performance: Fifty-eight percent of adults disapprove of Trump's job as president, compared to 40% who approve. On specific issues, negative views predominate, including immigration (55% disapprove to 43% approve), taxes (56% to 41%), the economy (60% to 38%), government spending (61% to 38%) and trade negotiations (61% to 37%).

Results varied significantly by party affiliation, with Republicans reporting far more positive views. Seventy-eight percent of Republican respondents approve of Trump's job performance, while 80% of Democrats disapprove. Republicans were also more likely to say that Trump understands the problems facing "people like them," with 47% agreeing, compared to just 5% of Democrats and 19% of independents.

The national poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, 2025, and has a sampling error of +/- 3.6 percentage points.

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