White House budget director Russ Vought pressed senators on Wednesday to clear President Donald Trump’s request to scrap $9.4 billion, amid GOP resistance to slashing funding for global health programs, public radio and PBS.
Testifying before the chamber’s appropriators, the OMB chief laid out the White House’s argument for canceling $8.3 billion in foreign assistance and $1.1 billion for public broadcasting.
The request — a sliver of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spends each year — is one small cog in Vought’s strategy to kill funding Congress already approved, as Republican lawmakers quietly decry Trump’s undercutting of their “power of the purse.”
“Most Americans would be shocked and appalled to learn that their tax dollars — money they thought was going to medical care — was actually going to far-left activism, population control and sex workers,” Vought said of the global health funding.
