President Donald Trump‘s rescission legislation has finally arrived in Congress, where it will have 45 days to be approved by both chambers on a simple majority vote. Success would be a significant victory in Trump’s campaign to dismantle the Left’s political infrastructure.
It is — very. Except Washington is full of Republicans afraid of their own shadow, even when that terrifying silhouette is cast in their plus-30 Republican district back home in ruby red Oklahoma or Idaho — to pick two states at random.
Rescission is a sort of reverse spending, with Congress cutting funding it has already appropriated. Importantly, the procedure means that in the Senate, the bill won’t face the 60-vote filibuster procedure. The filibuster has stymied more legislation than Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan slayed opponents on the battlefield, combined. OK, maybe not, but you still get the point.
This rescission legislation sets the stage for the administration to reach milestones. It’s all about two of the main structures that the Left captured in its drive to fund its ideas and causes with taxpayer money: the U.S. Agency for International Development and public broadcasting.
The legislation is worth $9.4 billion. That’s peanuts in Washington, yet it would put one more dent in the drive to reduce spending and the deficit, and with that, the nation’s gargantuan $36 trillion debt.
This instance would allow Trump to claw back $1.1 billion Congress had already appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit organization whose creation Congress authorized in 1967. The CPB collects the money Congress allocates for public broadcasting and distributes it to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, other content producers, and some 1,500 public TV and radio stations.
The rescission legislation would also cancel funds Congress had already appropriated for USAID and the African Development Foundation. The past four months of Trump’s second term have shed light on horror stories about USAID, NPR, and PBS. Elon Musk used the chainsaw Argentine President Javier Milei gifted him to — metaphorically, of course — uncover how your tax dollars are spent.
It wasn’t pretty, which is why Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said the rescission legislation “would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests.”
In the case of the public broadcasters, Trump’s drive to relieve taxpayers from having to fund them every year, to the tune of $535 million, has focused attention on irrefutable evidence of Leftist bias. A fact sheet that the White House released in April laid out all the facts. It contained not just damning anecdotal evidence, but hard numbers revealing a sustained bias. Trump then moved to issue an executive order on May 1, instructing the CPB to quit funding PBS and NPR, and to ensure that local public stations were not using taxpayer funding to buy programming from them.
For example, the fact sheet cited a study by the Media Research Center, which found that congressional Republicans saw 85% negative coverage, while congressional Democrats saw 54% positive coverage on PBS’s flagship News Hour program. Another cited MRC study found that PBS news staff “used 162 variations of the term ‘far-right,’ but only six variations of ‘far-left’.”
The list was long, and the fact sheet cited not just MRC but also the bias rating agency AllBias and evidence provided by an NPR whistleblower, Uri Berliner.
In the case of USAID, it funded opium-growing in Afghanistan, child sex trafficking in Kenya and the Central African Republic, and transgender programs and DEI trainings all over the world. How any of that served U.S. national security purposes was never explained.
What did become clear, as Musk and the administration made their case to the public, was that the Left deftly captured the Washington infrastructure and were using money extracted from the taxpayers, all of them, progressives and conservatives, to fund their pet causes.
So why on earth would Republicans in Congress vote against this legislation, and save the CPB’s bacon once again? Because of that 85% negativity coverage?
Individual ones, under pressure from the CPB, USAID, and their lobbyists, think they’ll be spared. Some may have also bought into the broadcasters’ claims that they are indispensable in delivering warnings during emergencies and to the success of local journalism.
However, as Rebecca Phillips and I demonstrate in this Heritage study, the emergency warning delivery task can be handled by another agency, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the argument that the taxpayer is the last business model for local news is fatuous.
SPARE US THE TARIFFS ON SCOTCH — AND EVERYTHING ELSE
USAID’s supporters have also made the case that unless its funding is restored, tens of thousands of people will die. Basically, both USAID and the CPB are resorting to emotional blackmail.
Yet, these groups fail to demonstrate how their programs justify their costs, never mind why conservative taxpayers must bear the burden of paying for causes and ideas that are inimical to their views. Public funds ought to serve the public good.
