Heritage Action supports the rescissions package (H.R. 4) and will include it as a key vote on our legislative scorecard.
Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the White House can request cuts to unused funds from the current budget year, which can be passed by Congress with a simple majority vote within 45 legislative days.
The Trump administration’s $9.4 billion package rescinds $8.3 billion from Department of State and USAID programs and $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). This problematic funding has been often spotlighted for elimination by Heritage Foundation policy experts.
USAID has come to represent foreign aid bureaucracy that has gone off the ideological rails and no longer reflects the will or values of the American people. Particularly under the Obama and Biden administrations, Americans watched in horror as foreign assistance programs like PEPFAR were hollowed out to fund LGBTQI+ activities, entities that promote abortion, radical DEI programs, and Green New Deal-type policies around the world while ballooning deficit spending at home. The American people expect their taxpayer dollars to be spent putting America first, not bankrolling international institutions like the World Health Organization and other United Nations affiliated entities that undermine national sovereignty. Eliminating wasteful spending in these programs will bolster America’s standing around the world as a city on Hill standing for freedom, rather than as a bully coercing other nations into its destructive woke ideology.
In principle, funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting stands in contrast to the American founding principles of free speech and expression. Thomas Jefferson explained why continued taxpayer funding for public broadcasting is immoral when he said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagations of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” Furthermore, in practice, the corrosive ideology of taxpayer-funded entities like NPR and PBS would strike at the greatest fears of our founding generation as a mouthpiece for the destructive indoctrination of gender ideology to children, critical race theory, climate hysteria, and hyperpartisan “journalism.”
President Trump, in his May 1, 2025 Executive Order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of the Biased Media” rightly pointed out that the CPB’s funding of NPR and PBS fails to reflect its own governing statute reflecting principles of impartiality: “the CPB may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party, 47 U.S.C. 396(f)(3).” Therefore, rescinding these funds is not only good policy, it also restores funding to alignment with statutory law.
Before President Trump requested rescissions in 2018, the authority to submit rescissions requests had lain dormant for nearly two decades as spending skyrocketed. This rescissions package demonstrates a return to fiscal sanity and the Trump administration's commitment on delivering on promises to combat the outrageous debt and deficit that is already weighing on future generations.
Congress should swiftly approve this rescissions package and continue to cut wasteful spending identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) including in the annual appropriations process.
Heritage Action supports the rescissions package (H.R. 4) and will include it as a key vote on our legislative scorecard.
Heritage Action supports the rescissions package (H.R. 4) and will include it as a key vote on our legislative scorecard.