President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to research, education, and public health programs were rejected by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, which is chaired by Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
However, the Trump administration’s intentions to modify a jumbo airplane that Qatar sent to the White House and funds for public broadcasting were two areas of the budget legislation where Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree.
The National Institutes of Health’s budget was to be slashed by 40%, according to the administration’s proposal. Instead, the Senate Appropriations Committee decided to raise NIH’s budget by $400 million for the upcoming fiscal year, which is a little less than 1% increase. Additionally, senators inserted language in the measure to prohibit the administration from altering the way federal funding are distributed to research institutes and opposed drastic cuts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than $1 trillion in discretionary spending for employment, education, health and human services, and defense is included in the budget bills. Currently working on their own budget legislation, the House and Senate appropriations committees, which make decisions about the use of federal funds, would need to resolve any discrepancies.
Collins, a Republican, added that the committee bill would reinstate financing for the Job Corps training program and the management of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. Lawmakers fiercely opposed the administration’s proposal to end both programs on both sides of the aisle.
“It also maintains funding for TRIO, a program that I know from the experience in my state has made an incredible difference in the opportunities provided for many low-income and first-generation students seeking higher education,” Collins told the committee at the time.
However, the bill’s exclusion of money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds regional PBS and NPR member stations, drew criticism from Democrats. The only two Republicans who opposed reclaiming $1 billion in public broadcasting funding from the current budget were Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is also a member of the Appropriations Committee, two weeks ago.
Democrats also said that the president and his Office of Management of Budget director, Russ Vought, were trying to undermine the constitutionally granted “power of the purse” to Congress.
“We cannot afford to go down the path that Trump and Russ Vought want to push us down,” stated the committee’s top Democrat, Senator Patty Murray of Washington. “Their vision is one where this committee becomes less bipartisan and less powerful, where the president and the OMB director call the shots and some Republicans in Congress spend their time cutting what they are told to cut, even at the expense of their own constituents.”
