US Congress approves $9 bn in Trump cuts to foreign aid, public media

WASHINGTON: US Republicans early on Friday approved President Donald Trump’s plan to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, vowing it was just the start of broader efforts by Congress to slash the federal budget.

The cuts achieve only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion in annual savings that tech billionaire and estranged Trump donor Elon Musk vowed to find before his acrimonious exit in May from a role spearheading federal cost-cutting.

But Republicans, who recently passed a domestic policy bill expected to add more than $3 trillion to US debt, said the vote honoured Trump’s election campaign pledge to rein in runaway spending.

“President Trump and House Republicans promised fiscal responsibility and government efficiency,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement shortly after the vote. “Today, we’re once again delivering on that promise.”

Both chambers of Congress are Republican-controlled, meaning a party-line House of Representatives vote of 216 to 213, moments after midnight, was sufficient to rubber-stamp the Senate-passed measure.

Most of the cuts target programmes for countries hit by disease, war and natural disasters, but the move also scraps $1.1 billion that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.

Conservatives say the funding – which goes mostly to more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, as well as to public broadcasters NPR and PBS – is unnecessary and has funded biased coverage.

By RSS/AFP