WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s a race against the clock for Congress to pass a piece of legislation, known as the rescissions package, which would claw back billions of congressionally approved funds. The President threatened members he won’t support them in their re-election efforts if they don’t support this legislation.
In this package, it would take back money for things like global AIDS prevention and public broadcasting. In total, it’s about $9.4 billion dollars in already approved congressional spending. The House already approved this last month but we’re hearing some Senate Republicans are not all on board with this.
Most of the cuts would be to foreign aid and another portion of these cuts would also claw back money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS.
Some Senators have already suggested they are not in favor of these cuts and could be open to modifying them. With the slim margins in the chamber, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three of their members before they would need the Vice President to step in and cast a tie-breaking vote.
We’re told Democrats could potentially have another so-called “vote-a-rama” on this legislation, which could eat up time.
“Because this is a type of legislation that can be amended, they can stick a bunch of amendments on it and get votes on every single amendment and really gum up the operation in the Senate in the process of doing this,” said Dr. Todd Belt, professor and director of political management at George Washington University.
We can expect the Senate to take up this measure later this week. If there are any changes to it, it would have to get sent back to the House and they would have to approve it again before Friday.
