PEPFAR Funding Restored
A major unforced error has apparently been reversed.
The Hill (“White House agrees to exempt PEPFAR from cuts“):
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told reporters after meeting with Senate Republicans on Tuesday that the White House is on board with a substitute amendment to the rescissions package that would exempt PEPFAR, the global anti-AIDS initiative from cuts.
Vought said that the president could accept the substitute amendment to exempt the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative George W. Bush launched in 2003, from rescissions.
He said the size of the rescissions package would be $9 billion if the Senate substitute amendment is adopted.
“It’s substantially the same package and the Senate has to work its will and we’ve appreciated the work along the way to get to a place where they’ve got the votes,” he said.
“There is a substitute amendment that does not include the PEPFAR rescission and we’re fine with that,” Vought said Tuesday after the lunch.
The amendment means the House will have to vote again on the legislation. House Republicans had pressed for the Senate not to change the bill.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior member of the Appropriations panel, had expressed concern over the proposed cut to PEPFAR, which is now likely to be dropped from the bill.
For reasons I outlined Saturday (“Millions Will Die Unless US Aid Money is Replaced“), this is an unalloyed good. That the cuts managed to make it through both Houses of Congress in the first place, though, is a sign of how uncoordinated and rushed through the process was in the first place.
For the present split second.
I really wish it was not just the usual GOP suspects such as the Senators from Maine and Alaska that are sounding the alarm that going through with this rescissions bill is pretty much a horrible idea.
It feels like this type of bill is set up to allow Trump to basically steal taxpayer approved funds meant for certain projects, departments, etc , and redirect to his pet programs.
The folks that said Harry Reid’s end run around the opposition in Congress to get the votes needed for Democratic bills would harm the Democratic party big time have unfortunately been proven right, much to my chagrin.
If MAGA folks like Fortune, JKB, and Connor really believe using a nuclear type option like a rescisions bill will not come back to haunt the GOP, well…. picture me shrugging my shoulders because they will believe what they want to believe.
It may take what feels like forever and a day but oftentimes what comes around goes around.
This shows once again that you can count on Republicans to do the right thing. If they catch enough spit for having done the wrong thing.
Agreed. Additionally for those who argued the cuts were necessary for budget reasons, we need to call out that the action of an emergency stopping and unravelling and then within months restarting the program will end up costing US taxpayers for more than a planned wind down.
That’s before we consider the human cost (both at home and abroad) that this stoppage has had.
The attempt to performatively “fight government waste” ends up creating far more waste than the program did on it’s own. Which is what everyone who had direct experience with government programs predicted.