(The Center Square) – As lawmakers begin crafting the 12 annual appropriations bills to fund the federal government in fiscal year 2026, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has implied that his party will refuse to cooperate in the process if Republicans revoke billions in funding from previous years.
The Senate is set to vote on a rescissions package that narrowly passed the House in June and would cancel already appropriated federal funds for public broadcasting and some foreign aid programs.
Republicans only need a majority vote for the legislation to pass the upper chamber. But Schumer warned GOP lawmakers in a Tuesday letter that passing the rescissions package will have “grave implications,” such as Democrats blocking any government funding deal and risking a government shutdown.
“[I]t is absurd for [Republicans] to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes,” Schumer wrote.
Lawmakers never passed a fiscal year 2025 budget, instead passing three consecutive Continuing Resolutions (CRs) to keep government funding on cruise control until the end of the current fiscal year, Sept. 30.
The Rescissions Act of 2025, compiled by the Office of Management and Budget, requests the cancellation of $9.4 billion in federal spending deemed wasteful by the Trump administration. This includes $8.3 billion for non-lifesaving, “woke” foreign assistance and $1.1 billion for “politically biased” public broadcasting systems, including PBS and NPR.
Among other foreign aid projects, the GOP rescissions package would claw back $900 million from various USAID global health programs. OMB said the loss will not reduce treatment for HIV, AIDS, infectious diseases, or child and maternal health. Instead, it will zero out funding for programs related to population control and abortion, LGBTQ activities and equity programs.
Some of those clawbacks include $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia; $6 million for “Net Zero Cities” in Mexico; and $5.1 million to strengthen the “resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer global movements.” The bill also slashes funding for climate-based energy projects in developing countries, such as electric buses for Rwanda.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has told reporters that the rescissions package is “the first of many” in Republicans’ “multifront war against the deficit.”
President Donald Trump has also asked Republicans to cut more than $163 billion from programs across federal agencies, especially programs related to DEI or climate initiatives.
