Democrats voted to raise your taxes by $4.5 trillion. They voted against cutting the federal budget by $9 billion. No wonder they’re polling at 19%. Heck, only 39% of Democrats approve of Democrats.
Fortunately, the Jackass Party failed in both cases. Republicans passed and President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act at the beginning of July. Early this morning, the House passed a rescissions bill cutting $9 billion from the federal budget. The Senate passed it early Thursday. Trump is expected to sign it this weekend.
In some respects, the bill is a remarkable accomplishment. It finally cuts funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which has been untouchable for decades. It also cuts foreign aid, which is a significant win for the America First agenda. Even better, the Associated Press notes with more than a tinge of lament, “The vote marked the first time in decades [since 1999] that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last.”
As House Speaker Mike Johnson argued after its passage, “We need to get back to fiscal sanity, and this is an important step.”
I’m certainly glad to eliminate $8 billion in wasteful foreign aid, and I’m ecstatic about cutting NPR and PBS by $1.1 billion, which represents the full amount the CPB was due to receive over the next two years. It’s a real cut, not one of those fake ones that only reduce growth. Take that, Elmo.
Alas, I must also play the role of Debbie Downer for a moment, though I promise not to change my pronouns. This is indeed a step in the right direction to “get back to fiscal sanity,” but it’s only the smallest of steps. That $9 billion represents a laughable 0.1% of the nearly $7 trillion federal budget for Fiscal Year 2025.
Worse, the votes in both chambers were excruciatingly close (51-48 in the Senate, 216-213 in the House), with some members acting as if Republicans were murdering Santa Claus. Zero Democrats voted for these infinitesimally small cuts, and six Republicans (four House, two Senate) opposed it as well. Even some who voted for it worried about doing any more. “Let’s not make a habit of this,” warned Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s “contribution” to the Republican Party, lamented that public media stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”
The AP helpfully contextualized Murkowski’s alarmism: “As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.” Those warnings were canceled an hour later when no tsunami appeared.
Never mind that Texas Public Radio did not issue a similar alert for the deadly flash flooding on July 4.
The AP says a similar danger will result from some of the foreign aid cuts: “Senate GOP leaders took out a $400 million cut to PEPFAR, a politically popular program to combat HIV/AIDS that is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under Republican President George W. Bush.”
People are going to die because of Republican budget cuts!
Spare me the hyperventilating nonsense. The federal government never had any business subsidizing media outlets, and even less so for two rabidly leftist outlets in today’s ubiquitous media environment. Maybe it’s callous to say it, but there is no national interest in spending taxpayer money mitigating AIDS among foreign gay men.
By the way, aside from the ridiculous assertion that cutting CPB funding is an attack on free speech, the most hilarious new line of attack for leftists railing against cutting NPR and PBS is that it would hurt rural Americans most.
You know, the racist backwater rubes who voted for Donald Trump.
Evidently, if these toothless hordes are lucky enough to have running water, they also depend on NPR and PBS to give them the news tell them what to think. How will they survive without “All Things Considered”?
NPR CEO Katherine Maher told CBS News yesterday, “The primary impact of this potential rescission is going to hurt communities where they need support most, which are rural stations — stations that serve communities that do not have access to other forms of local news, emergency reporting, emergency alerting.”
Consider for a moment that in order to get her message out, she had to visit CBS.
Also consider that she’s the same left-wing lunatic who once declared that America (a.k.a. rural America) is “addicted to white supremacy.” We have a whole list of articles outlining other instances of NPR’s left-wing bias.
The New York Times parroted Maher’s defense, writing an entire editorial feigning concern for rural Americans facing the desperate plight of “becoming less informed about their communities.” The Times warns, “Nearly one in five NPR member stations could close down without federal funding, one analysis found.”
Later in the editorial, however, the editors admit, “Only about 2 percent of [NPR’s] budget comes directly from the federal government.”
Then comes the kicker: Defunding NPR, the Times says, is reminiscent “of the excesses of the ‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish ICE’ movements on the other side of the ideological spectrum.”
Wait, what? Not funding a propaganda outlet is the same as demoralizing police and wrecking public safety?
Back to the larger issue of cutting anything at all from the federal budget, the awful truth is staring everyone in the mirror. “The primary obstacle to cutting federal spending is the American people,” writes PJ Media’s Rick Moran. “We’ve become drunk on federal dollars.” Our representatives caused it for a reason.
Taxpayer money is confiscated and redistributed for virtually countless programs, and then we’re told of all the heinous suffering that will take place if we don’t continue allocating that money every year for eternity. Because most of us are kindhearted suckers, nothing ever gets cut.
As our nation approaches its 250th birthday, ponder for a moment that it took a president the Left thinks is a king to rally the congressional votes to stop spending 13 cents out of a $100 bill.
