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Senate GOP deals blow to rural America in voting to defund NPR and PBS [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-07-17
Senate Republicans voted in the wee hours of Thursday morning to cut $9 billion worth of congressionally appropriated funds to NPR, PBS, and foreign aid—yet another move that hurts the rural communities that back Republicans at the ballot box.
The funding cuts—which were made using a rarely used budget maneuver called a recissions package that is not subject to filibuster rules—passed by a vote of 51-48. Two Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—voted no alongside Democrats. The package now goes back to the House, which is expected to quickly pass it before the Friday deadline that would require the Trump administration to spend the funds.
The $9 billion in cuts make permanent some of the funding reductions former co-President Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency wanted to make.
“Warning Siren” by Mike Luckovich
Cutting public radio and television funding will hurt rural communities, which rely on public media for extreme weather warnings. It will also hurt rural farming communities, which took in billions of foreign aid dollars to grow the food that was shipped abroad to help end hunger in poor countries.
But President Donald Trump, who would rather line the pockets of his billionaire buddies than help the poor, didn't want to spend funds helping end world hunger. He also loathes public media, which accurately covers his corrupt behavior—unlike the right-wing propaganda networks like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN that fawn all over him and feed lies to viewers to scare them into voting for the GOP.
"Republicans are gutting PBS and NPR because Trump hates the truth," Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) said in a post on X. "Millions rely on public broadcasting for free, local, even lifesaving news. I’ll vote NO against any cuts—and hold the line against censorship."
Even some Republicans were wary of voting for the recissions package, saying the Trump administration was not clear enough on what exact programs would be cut, or how it would impact the rural communities they represent.
But since Republicans do whatever Trump tells them to, they ultimately went along with undermining their own power of the purse to give Trump what he wanted.
“Let’s not consider this a precedent,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Politico, adding that he voted for the bill “with reservation.”
Passing the recissions package could have other long-term negative consequences for the GOP.
Because Republicans showed Democrats that any deals they make during a government funding negotiation are meaningless, as the GOP will renege on those agreements in future recissions packages, it will make passing a government funding bill this fall more challenging.
"There’s little reason for the minority party in Congress to agree to a deal when the Administration and the majority party can strip away funding they don’t like in a purely partisan way, or if the Administration may attempt unilaterally—and illegally—not to implement it at all, with no pushback from the majority party in Congress," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a piece warning Republicans not to pass the recissions package. "As a result, it would be far more difficult to reach the bipartisan agreements necessary to fund the government on time and with the resources required to serve the country’s needs."
Democrats said as much ahead of the vote.
"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," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) 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."
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