What Is in the Rescissions Bill?
June 11, 2025
Last week, President Trump officially requested that the U.S. Congress act to permanently rescind the funding previously approved for several wasteful spending items tagged by DOGE.
It’s a very short bill. House Resolution 4 (H.R.4) identifies just 21 line items of spending, most of which are related to foreign aid. One line, however, kills the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by wiping out its federal government funding for 2026 and 2027.
Altogether, the proposed spending cut package totals $9.4 billion.
Debate Over the Spending Cuts
It’s an open question of whether the House of Representatives can muster a majority in support of the proposed spending reductions. Roll Call‘s Niels Lesniewski reports on the early debate that may derail the effort.
“The rescissions request sent to Congress by the Trump Administration takes the federal government in a new direction where we actually cut waste, fraud, and abuse and hold agencies accountable to the American people,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said in a statement.
The path to House passage of the $9.4 billion package is still far from clear. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., has already indicated he would vote against the package if it includes cuts to the George W. Bush-era program known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which provides foreign aid to fight HIV and AIDS.
“I just want to make sure we’re funding the medicine. We want to prevent AIDS, it’s a noble program, it’s George Bush’s legacy. I put the marker out there; we’ll see,” Bacon said in an interview with the New York Times.
H.R.4 is expected to be the first of several rescission bills, so it’s worth watching to see how clashes between politicians ultimately shape it. For example, does preserving George Bush’s legacy from the early 2000s really deserve to be a deciding factor in what the U.S. government spends two decades later? Does putting the U.S. government onto a more sustainable fiscal path represent a more important legacy for today’s politicians? What are their real priorities?
Why Spending Reductions Are Needed
The U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding now exceeds $36.2 trillion. That number would be higher if not for the extraordinary measures the U.S. Treasury is using to keep that number below the statutory debt ceiling. Extraordinary measures that have become routine in recent years.
Paying the interest on the national debt has become the fastest growing category of government spending during the last four years. Uncle Sam spends more on interest than on national defense. The cost of all the federal government’s previous borrowing is only getting bigger.
It’s no accident the U.S. government lost its triple-A credit rating. Borrowing $10 billion a day, every day, to fund its excessive spending guaranteed it.
The U.S. government is expected to rack up a $1.865 trillion deficit in its 2025 fiscal year. As drafted, the first rescission bill would reduce the deficit by about half a percent.
That’s not very much, but it is a start. The challenge, however, is that entire generations of politicians have passed through the U.S. Congress without ever once having to prioritize how much to spend on things that best serve the national interest. We’re only now going to find out what they really care about.
The odds are good. The results of the debate over the proposed rescissions won’t be pretty. The best that can be said about it is that it’s long overdue.
