Bill cutting foreign aid and public broadcasting passes US House

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing Congress to claw back billions in pre-approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

The bill, which will see the government cut $9bn (£6.7bn) in total, was passed in a 216 to 213 vote just hours after midnight on Friday. All Democrats and only two Republicans voted against the cuts.

The US Senate passed its version of the bill less than 24 hours earlier.

The bill now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law. “THIS IS BIG!!!”, he wrote on social media after the vote.

Republicans have said the rescissions package, a political tool to cut funding already approved by Congress, is likely to be the first of many.

“This isn’t the end, it’s the beginning,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said after the bill was passed.

The victory for Republicans and President Trump is the latest development in their ongoing effort to shrink government spending.

“Nine billion dollars is a good start,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said.

The approved funding cuts include large reductions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which includes PBS and NPR.

It also includes cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest US global humanitarian programme.

The spending cuts, however, were slightly smaller than Trump had originally proposed. In the Senate version of the bill, lawmakers voted to keep $400m in the budget for Pepfar, a global Aids prevention programme, bringing the proposed cuts from $9.4bn to $9bn.

The bill faced a bit of a rocky path on its way through the House and Senate, with lawmakers on both sides of the isle wary of cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting.

As the Senate was preparing to vote on its version of the bill, people in Alaska were told to tune into their local radio station that includes NPR programming after an earthquake that struck off the coast prompted tsunami warnings on Wednesday.

“Public radio is a lifeline, connecting rural communities to the rest of the nation, and providing life-saving emergency broadcasting and weather alerts. It cannot be replaced,” NPR President Katherine Maher said after the Senate passed the bill.

According to US media, this rescissions package was the first to succeed in over 30 years.