Senators are hearing from the White House and President Donald Trump himself as the Senate prepares to vote on the first DOGE-inspired legislation of his second term.
Russ Vought, the White House budget chief, will visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss his request to cancel $9.4 billion in spending, known as a rescission bill. Separately, Trump has been engaging with senators on the request and last week threatened political consequences for any Republican who votes “no.”
Republicans are broadly supportive of the cuts, which target foreign aid and public broadcasting, but centrist members have been seeking amendments that would protect $900 million earmarked for global health programs.
A handful of members are also concerned about how the $1.1 billion in cuts to public broadcasting, aimed at outlets such as NPR and PBS, would affect radio access for tribal populations in their states.
With a Friday deadline to cancel the funds, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has been meeting with holdouts to discuss how the bill might be amended to win the 50 votes needed for passage, but the White House wants to avoid changes if possible and has been deploying Vought to ease their concerns.
Vought briefed Senate appropriators on the rescissions bill last month and has been in touch with undecided members in the lead-up to the first procedural vote, slated for Tuesday.
That outreach has helped keep Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a wildcard Republican who announced his retirement last month, open to the bill. He said the Office of Management and Budget has been “very responsive” to him, but threatened to flip against the cuts without adequate consultation for his colleagues.
“I’m a lean yes – but, you know, as long as the people who are asking legitimate questions get answers to it,” Tillis said. “If they don’t, then I may rethink it.”
Other skeptical Republicans include Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), both powerful appropriators who scrutinized Vought at their hearing in June, and senators like Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who represent states with large Native American populations.
Ahead of the first procedural vote, Vought has been invited to Senate Republicans’ Tuesday lunch, giving him a final chance to answer the questions of members who weren’t plugged into the process until early July, after Congress passed the tax-and-spending megabill through the reconciliation process.
“Quite frankly, a lot of this is just making sure people have accurate information about what’s in, what’s out, what’s affected, what isn’t, because we were so consumed with reconciliation for the better part of two months,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who was tapped in June to usher the rescissions bill through the Senate.
“So it’s just really, honestly, providing information that’s the most important thing we’re doing right now,” Schmitt added.
Thune told reporters Monday that he was unsure if the $9.4 billion request, spurred by the Department of Government Efficiency, would be altered but said Republicans have spent days talking through possible amendments.
The special process used to claw back spending is filibuster-proof, meaning Republicans can pass it along party lines, but it must first survive a series of procedural votes, followed by a so-called “vote-a-rama” that opens the legislation up to modification.
“We’ve got a lot of feedback, and I know there are folks who would like to see at least some modest changes to it, but it’s always, again, what the traffic will bear,” Thune said. “You know, we want to get on it, and we’re going to need 51 to get on and 51 to get off.”
Vought is projecting confidence that the bill will pass the Senate, though he conceded it would be “tight” in a brief interview with the Washington Examiner on Friday.
Thune can only afford to lose three Republicans on any party-line vote, and earlier this month required Vice President JD Vance to break a tie on their sprawling megabill. The rescissions bill squeaked through the House in a 214-212 vote in June, losing just four Republicans.
Schmitt, who has stayed in touch with Trump on the rescission bill, said the president is actively engaged in the Senate vote. On Thursday, Trump bristled at the dollars given to PBS and NPR, threatening in a Truth Social post to withhold his endorsement from any Republican who votes to preserve the funding.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a Trump ally, said the president also vented about the broadcast funding cuts in a phone call last Thursday.
Trump has used the threat of primary meddling with mixed success in the past. Tillis, one of three Republicans to oppose the megabill, refused to flip his vote and instead announced his retirement in the face of a similar warning.
Instead, Senate leadership is weighing how it can cobble together the 50 votes by accommodating reluctant senators ahead of the vote-a-rama. In that process, Republicans and Democrats can offer an unlimited number of amendments before a vote on final passage, but leadership wants to square away any GOP changes ahead of time to avoid drama on the Senate floor.
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The House would then have to pass the Senate’s version of the rescission before the deadline, a 45-day legislative stop clock that ends on Friday.
“We’ll try to do as much as we can before the vote-a-rama happens,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), an adviser to Thune. “I know it doesn’t seem like that long way, but 30 hours away, a lot of things can happen in 30 hours.”