Trump’s ambitious $9B clawback package successfully passes Senate despite Republican defectors in key, late-night vote.
Though Senate Republicans were successful in their mission to pass President Donald Trump’s clawback package, not every member of the conference was on board.
Only two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined with every Senate Democrat to vote against the $9 billion package geared toward clawing back foreign aid and public broadcasting funding.
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Senate Republican leaders had hoped that stripping $400 million in cuts to Bush-era international AIDS and HIV prevention funding could win over all the holdouts, both public and private. But the lawmakers who voted against the bill had deeper concerns about the level of transparency during the process and the impact successful rescissions could have on Congress’ power of the purse.
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she agreed with rescissions in general and supports them during the appropriations process, but couldn’t get behind the White House’s push because of a lack of clarity from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about exactly what would be cut and how.
She said that «the sparse text» sent to lawmakers included little detail and did not give a specific accounting of programs that would be cut to hit the original $9.4 billion target.
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«For example, there are $2.5 billion in cuts to the Development Assistance account, which covers everything from basic education, to water and sanitation, to food security — but we don’t know how those programs will be affected», she said.
