President Donald Trump’s allies in the Senate are warning their GOP colleagues that failing to pass the White House’s $9 billion-plus rescissions package would embarrass the president and show Republicans aren’t serious about reducing federal spending.
There’s cautious optimism among party leaders that the Senate can pass a rescissions bill. But the number of GOP holdouts and the scope of their concerns could force Republicans to significantly water down what’s already a relatively tiny pool of spending cuts. So the “shaming” period of the whip effort is well underway.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday that if Senate Republicans can’t pass a bill by next week’s deadline, the White House will “go nuts” and there will be “another Trump eruption.”
“If the Republicans in the United States Senate do not pass the rescissions package after all the rhetoric about reducing spending, then they should hide their head in a bag,” Kennedy told reporters. “And I think the White House will provide the bag.”
Kennedy’s warning was a reminder that, even after Republicans met Trump’s July 4 deadline for his “one big, beautiful bill,” the president wants GOP senators to keep bending to his agenda.
The whip count. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday it’s too early to game it out. But the first step will likely be a vote early next week to discharge the House-passed rescissions bill from the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Thune will then need to muster the 50 votes necessary to send an amended bill to the House so that it can hit Trump’s desk by July 18, the statutory deadline.
The rescissions package touches on foreign aid programs as well as public broadcasting funding. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Appropriations Committee chair, is among the leading skeptics of the proposal. Collins declined multiple times to speak with reporters Tuesday.
Collins and several other senior GOP appropriators have concerns about the proposed cuts to PEPFAR, a George W. Bush-era global HIV/AIDS prevention program. Others, like Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), believe that slashing public broadcasting funding will negatively impact rural and native communities.
“One way or another, OMB said they would work with us,” Rounds said. “So whatever forms it takes, we can’t lose these small-town radio stations across the country that [are] literally the only ways of getting out emergency messages.”
There’s also Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a new wild-card of sorts after he announced he isn’t running for reelection in 2026. Tillis said that while he’s sympathetic to the argument that cutting foreign aid undermines national security, he expects to vote yes.
“I’m planning on supporting it, but there are people who have expressed soft-power national security concerns that I’m going to take a look at,” Tillis said. “But I’m generally going to be in the yes column.”
