Senate Republicans again coalesced behind President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar spending clawback package and propelled the legislation through its final procedural hurdle, again with the aid of Vice President JD Vance.
Lawmakers will now go back and forth through 10 hours of debate on the bill, where Senate Democrats are expected to bleed time and slam the legislation for its cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting funding.
Trump’s smaller, $9 billion package passed with nearly all Senate Republicans, while all Senate Democrats voted against it. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., were the only Republicans to vote against the bill.
Once debate has wrapped up on the bill, lawmakers will go through another vote-a-rama, where an unlimited number of amendments can be offered for the bill by either side of the aisle. Democrats will likely try to sideline or derail the package, while the GOP is expected to offer an amendment that would spare about $400 million in international HIV and AIDS funding from the chopping block.
The carveout for the Bush-era President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was agreed to ahead of the vote and is backed by the White House. Trimming funding from the program rattled some Senate Republicans, who publicly and privately warned they may not support the bill unless a fix was found.
However, slashing the funding cut from the package could prove a tricky sell to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has called on Senate Republicans to not change the bill.
He’s been joined by fiscal hawks in the House Freedom Caucus, too, who have demanded that the Senate GOP stay the course on the rescissions package and warned that they would have serious issues if changes were made, stopping short of declaring a full-on rebellion against the bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., hoped that his colleagues in the lower chamber would play ball and pass the bill ahead of a looming Friday deadline.
‘There was a lot of interest among our members in doing something on the PEPFAR issue,’ he said ahead of the vote. ‘So, that’s reflected in the substitute, and we hope that if we can get this across the finish line in the Senate that the House will accept that one small modification.’