Senate approves cancellation of public broadcast funds: This is possibly the only kind of cancellation I can get behind!
Early this morning, the Senate voted 51–48 to remove $9 billion allocated for foreign aid and public broadcasting at the behest of the White House. Roughly $8 billion is for foreign aid, while roughly $1 billion will be cut from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds both NPR and PBS. Two Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins (R–Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska)—voted in opposition to the rescission bill.
"If the rescission bill ultimately makes it through Congress and President Donald Trump signs it, then Republicans will turn all the drama surrounding Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) into a meaningful, if small, reduction in federal spending," writes Reason's Eric Boehm. But these cuts, he notes, are just easy, palatable ones that will curry favor with the Republican base; they're marginal tweaks that avoid grappling with entitlement spending or anything that would actually have a bigger impact. "We're a long way from the $500 billion rescission request that Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) originally sought," adds Boehm, "and even farther from the $2 trillion in cuts that the Trump administration (with help from Musk, back when he was on the inside) promised to deliver." Still, it's a start.
