Congress passes spending cuts, including $1.1 billion from public broadcasting

WASHINGTON (CNN, POOL, HOUSE TV) – House Republicans signed off on billions of dollars in funding cuts sought by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, handing the president another legislative win.

House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson said, “We clawed back $9 billion in taxpayer funds and wasteful spending, fraud, waste, and abuse.”

The DOGE spending cuts were passed under an obscure and rarely used budget law that prevented a Senate filibuster and canceled $9 billion in federal funding that was previously approved by Congress.

That means $1.1 billion will be stripped from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS.

In addition, about $8 billion will be taken from foreign aid programs.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, was one of the first agencies targeted by DOGE.

With staffing decimated, nearly 500 metric tons of emergency aid food is set to expire this month and will be destroyed at taxpayer expense.

Jeremy Konyndyk, Refugees International president, says, “It takes a lot of people, a lot of workers, a lot of contracts to move this food around the world, and all of those people were laid off all of the USA programs were suspended.”

Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D) Kentucky also shared a comment on the situation.

McGarvey said, “It’s gonna make us less safe. It’s gonna take, uh, it’s gonna take funding away from public broadcasting for our kids when they’re already having an all-out assault on public education.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson hinted at further federal funding cuts, describing rescissions, as an ongoing quest.