The Senate passed President Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package late Wednesday night after a marathon series of amendment votes.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined all Democrats in opposing the measure. The package — which faces a Friday deadline — now heads to the House.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has set a possible floor vote for this afternoon on the measure. This would be a big win for Trump and GOP leaders.
Funding fallout. Attention now turns to Senate Democrats, who will need to decide if — and how — to follow through on their implicit threats to walk away from any bipartisan FY2026 spending deal if Republicans passed a rescissions package. Senate Democrats have leverage because any funding measure needs at least 60 votes.
With an eye on how March’s funding fight turned out (hint: poorly), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will have a chance at a do-over. Schumer said Wednesday that the rescissions effort “compromises” Congress’ ability to “reach bipartisan and reasonable appropriations deals.” He’s also cited impoundments and the Trump administration’s threats of “pocket rescissions” at the end of the fiscal year.
Even GOP appropriators are pulling teeth to get OMB to release education funds that were due to be released on July 1, underscoring the Trump administration’s defiance of Congress’ intent.
Yet the rescissions fight doesn’t appear to be having an immediate impact on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s churn. The panel is still marking up bipartisan appropriations bills, with the MilCon-VA funding measure on tap for this morning.
The Commerce-Justice-Science bill, which stalled out last week after a dispute over a new FBI headquarters, will also be taken up.
A GOP reckoning. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he intends to process as many funding bills as possible on the floor before the Sept. 30 deadline. This could begin as soon as this month.
But Thune and other Republicans have acknowledged that the rescission effort has been a tough moment for appropriators like Collins.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, went as far as to say Democrats are “correct” about how rescissions will impact FY2026 spending talks:
“It’d be better long-term if Democrats felt like they had an opportunity to argue, work back and forth and still get a 60-vote approval for a final product coming through Appropriations in the future, which would include a review of rescissions proposed to them.”
Some Republicans even say they took a risk by backing the rescissions bill. A few GOP senators voted for the measure after receiving commitments from the Trump administration that certain programs won’t be cut even if they fall under the funding accounts listed in the rescissions package. That includes Rounds, who got assurances on tribal radio stations.
Jeffrey Epstein update. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are sending a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to provide a report next month to the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations panel on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The subcommittee approved a Van Hollen amendment last week requiring a DOJ report on Epstein as part of the CJS bill. With the full Senate Appropriations Committee set to mark up the CJS bill today, Durbin and Van Hollen are urging Bondi not to wait until the bill becomes law but to issue the report by mid-August.
