(Washington) The US Senate adopted Thursday, under the leadership of the White House and the Doge of Elon Musk, a text that would allow the Trump administration not to have to spend some $ 9 billion in public funds, mainly intended for international aid.
Despite a republican majority of 53 seats out of 100, the vote was acquired at only 51 votes for and 48 against.
Republican senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted against, while their Kentucky counterpart, Mitch McConnell, who had opposed the day before the project on Wednesday, voted in his favor.
Photo J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press
Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski
The vote was blocked at 50-50 Wednesday, during the preliminary examination of the amendments, and it was the vice-president JD Vance who had the last word, as the Constitution wants, to advance the text until Thursday morning.
This text concerns nearly $ 8 billion which was intended for the USAID development aid agency, the rest must be mainly devoted to the public media NPR and PBS.
The PEPFAR World PEPFAR program to combat AIDS, created under George W. Bush, was initially concerned by these cuts, with $ 400 million canceled, but moderate senators have obtained this portion of the text already adopted in the House of Representatives.
The lower room will therefore have to vote again, before the deadline on Friday evening, to approve the modified version of the text it had adopted in June.
The head of the Republican majority in the Senate, John Thune, put the impact of these cuts while greeting a necessary first step.
Photo Mark Schiefelbein, Associated Press
The chief of the republican majority in the Senate, John Thune
“We are talking about a tenth of 1 % of all federal spending here,” he told the press.
“When you have a debt of 36,000 billion dollars, we have to do something,” added the South Dakota senator.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told AFP that the bill was consistent with Donald Trump’s promises to reduce expenses.
Photo Rod Lamkey, Associated Press
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham
“I have always been a great supporter of help programs abroad … I am a very hawk (interventionist) type, but foreign aid is necessary. The “soft power” is necessary, ”he said.
But when you start spending money on a lot of unnecessary stuff, and for liberal programs unrelated to the initial objective of these aids, it becomes difficult for a guy like me.
Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator
On the other side of the hemicycle, the Democrats are united to oppose the project.
Corey Booker, a democratic senator of New Jersey, denounced to AFP “a new example in the terrible way in which the spirit and the ideals of our Constitution are shaken” under Donald Trump.
At the time of the adoption of the initial text to the House of Representatives, the Republican President had welcomed $ 9 billion “intended for a waste -fed foreign aid”.
He had also attacked the NPR radio and the PBS television channel, “highly biased” against the Republicans according to him. The two public media are likely to lose $ 1.1 billion intended for them.
The American Constitution provides that the congress only has the power to allocate federal public funds. The vote of this text is the first in what the Republicans presented as a potential series of legislative packages codifying the discounts of expenditure identified by DOGE and requested by the White House, while these funds had already been approved previously by the Congress.
