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Bye-bye, Big Bird: GOP inches closer to gutting public media [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-07-16
On Tuesday, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to cutting billions in congressionally appropriated funding Dear Leader Donald Trump dislikes, after Vice President JD Vance broke a tie to advance a recissions package that defunds NPR and PBS, and cuts billions in foreign aid.
A recissions package is not subject to the filibuster, so Senate Republicans only need a simple majority for it to pass. Three Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—voted against moving the package to debate, requiring Vance to break the tie.
Passing this recissions package—which would make permanent some of the cuts former co-President Elon Musk tried to make through his incompetent and destructive Department of Government Efficiency—is problematic for multiple reasons.
First and foremost, it would be damaging for rural Americans who both rely on publicly funded PBS and NPR stations for weather warnings and more, and also receive billions in foreign aid money growing crops that are distributed to poor countries across the globe.
“For Republicans to turn around and slash local news and public radio in the name of fiscal responsibility is a vindictive swipe at rural America, where these stations are needed so badly. It’ll leave rural communities twisting in the wind,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Monday night after Vance’s tie-breaking vote.
It would also be damaging for Congress' ability to pass future government funding bills down the road. It shows the Democratic senators—who voted for the government spending bill—that any deals they make in future government funding negotiations are just smoke and mirrors if Republicans will turn around and strip that funding away through the recissions process.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the recissions package a "dirty trick" by Republicans.
Sen. Chris Murphy calls the package a “dirty trick.”
"What they're doing is cutting out of the budget all the things that DOGE targeted. With this recissions bill they are going after all the foreign aid funding that DOGE hates, and they're going after PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They're literally going to take Sesame Street off the air," Murphy said in a video posted on X. "Why would Democrats ever again negotiate a bipartisan budget with Republicans if Republicans two months later can just pass a partisan bill that keeps the spending that Republicans like and cuts the spending that Democrats supported in the bipartisan process? So this isn't just really bad policy, this is just another way that Republicans are corroding the rule of law, the institutional norms that have held together our democracy for decades."
And Schumer warned that this is just the start for Republicans, who could come after other critical funding in future recissions packages.
“Let me be clear, this is not just about foreign assistance, important as that is. This is the playbook that Republicans will use across the board,” Schumer said. “They will do it with healthcare. They will do it with the Department of Education. They will do it with our schools, our veterans, our housing. They will do it to research dollars. I’ve heard of more great research projects that could have saved lives now on hold, that can never be brought back again, because of the greed of the billionaires and the obeisance of Republicans to go along.”
Meanwhile, even Senate Republicans who voted to advance the recissions package to debate say it's problematic, saying that the Trump administration has not given enough information about the exact programs that would be cut.
“When George W. Bush proposed Rescissions back in 1992, he listed specific programs that would receive specific amounts of cuts. And it was a rather thick proposal. But members on both sides of the aisle in both houses … had exact information about what programs would be targeted and where the cuts would be made and by what amount. That is not present in the proposal before us tonight. And that troubles me,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Fox News’ Chad Pergram, even though Wicker voted to advance the legislation to debate.
But since defying Dear Leader is out of the question for the cultists in the GOP, they are speeding this latest crap sandwich legislation toward passage. God helps us all.
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