The U.S. Republican-controlled House of Representatives has narrowly passed President Donald Trump's $9 billion funding cut for public media and foreign aid, sending it to the White House to be signed into law.
The chamber voted 216 to 213 in favour of the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400 million in funds for the global PEPFAR HIV/AIDS prevention programme.
The cuts include $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, raising concerns for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) stations.
Republicans say the foreign aid funds previously went to programmes they deem wasteful, and they say the $1 billion in public media funding supports radio stations and PBS television that are biased against conservative viewpoints.
Only two House Republicans voted against the cut, Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania and Mike Turner from Ohio, along with Democrats.
"We are taking one small step to cut wasteful spending, but one giant leap towards fiscal sanity," said Representative Aaron Bean, a Florida Republican, advocating for a similar spending cut package from the White House every month.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that the funding cut "undermines our ability to keep our people safe here and to project America's soft power all over the globe," and argued rural Americans' access to emergency information on public radio will be diminished.
The funding vote was delayed for hours amid Republican disagreements about other legislation, and calls from some members of the party for more government transparency about the deceased convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
To satisfy the Epstein-related concerns without holding up the funding cut bill any longer, Republicans on the House Rules committee introduced a resolution that calls for the release of Epstein documents by the U.S. attorney general within 30 days.
"It's a sound, good-faith resolution that ensures protections for victims and innocent witnesses," said Representative Virginia Foxx from North Carolina, the Republican leader of the rules committee.
But the top Democrat on the rules panel, Representative Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, blasted the resolution as a "glorified press release" because it lacks an enforcement mechanism to make the Justice Department comply.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, appointed by Trump, said she would seek court approval to release grand jury materials.
Trump later downplayed the matter, calling the attention “exaggerated.”
Trump administration officials have promised to send more rescissions requests to Congress if the foreign aid and broadcasting package succeeds.
This week's funding clawback represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts.
Democratic lawmakers say the administration has blocked more than $425 billion of spending approved by Congress since Trump's second term began in January.
With a 30 September deadline to pass a full budget, lawmakers face a tight timeline and growing internal divisions.
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