House Republicans get vexed about cutting public broadcasting, anti-AIDS programs

House Republicans are raising concerns about cuts to public broadcasting and an AIDS prevention program that are part of a $9.4 billion package of spending reductions scheduled for a vote Thursday.

The spending cuts — $8.3 billion from various foreign aid accounts and $1.1 billion from public broadcasting — mark the first set of recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency that the White House asked Congress to codify through a process known as rescissions.

Congress appropriated the funding, but if the rescissions package is enacted, the White House will no longer be obligated to spend the money.

House Republican leaders said they can alleviate members’ concerns without removing cuts from the $9.4 billion package. Republicans can afford no more than three defections if all Democrats vote against the measure.

“It’s going to pass,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Minnesota Republican.

The Trump administration has asked lawmakers to claw back “wasteful and unnecessary spending.”

“These rescissions would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests, such as funding the World Health Organization, LGBTQI+ activities, ‘equity’ programs, radical Green New Deal-type policies, and color revolutions in hostile places around the world,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said in a letter accompanying the rescissions request.

The package also would eliminate most public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit that helps fund public media such as NPR, PBS and their local affiliates.

Mr. Vought said federal spending on CPB “subsidizes a public media system that is politically biased and is an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”

Several House Republicans are worried about the impact on local PBS and NPR affiliates, often the only media outlets operating in rural areas.

“I’m looking for something that acknowledges that local stations are important,” said Rep. Mark Amodei, Nevada Republican. “And if you want to punish the national people, fine by me.”

The $1.1 billion cut in the rescissions package would claw back advanced CPB funding for fiscal 2026 and 2027. Mr. Amodei said 70% of that funding would go to local TV stations. Eliminating that funding would require the local affiliates to raise money to make up the gap, which he said they couldn’t do as easily as the national outlets.

Mr. Amodei, a senior appropriator, said he has not decided to oppose the rescissions package if the full CBP cuts remain. He has not heard from anyone at the White House seeking to address his concerns, and he said Republican leaders do not want to tweak the bill.

No House Republicans have definitively said they will vote against the package, and even some who have raised issues said they support enough of the cuts to vote for it.

That includes Rep. Michael Simpson of Idaho, another senior Republican appropriator who shares Mr. Amodei’s concerns about the CPB cuts impacting local affiliates.

“I’ve talked to the public television staff. They understand the issues,” he said.

Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, also has concerns about the cuts to public broadcasting.

“I think they should restore some of it, frankly, but we’ll see,” he said.

Mr. Bacon wouldn’t say whether he would oppose the package if the broadcast funding cuts are not scaled back. He said he is letting other colleagues take the lead on that issue after he pressed for answers about cuts to the AIDS prevention program.

The rescissions package proposes to cut $400 million of the $6 billion appropriated in fiscal 2025 for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, created during the George W. Bush administration to combat HIV/AIDS around the world.

Mr. Bacon said he was initially concerned that the rescissions package would claw back all federal funding for the program, but he became more comfortable with it after learning it would slash only a small portion of the program’s budget.

He was assured that the cuts would not affect lifesaving medical preventions and treatments but would instead focus on eliminating woke training programs.

The White House has provided a handful of examples of wasteful spending on the HIV/AIDS program, including $5.1 million to strengthen the “resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer global movements,” $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia, and $833,000 for services for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal.

Several Republicans said they were examining the potential impacts of the rescissions before deciding whether to vote for the $9.4 billion in cuts.

“I just want to make sure that we’re not [eliminating] something that should stay active,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington.

Rep. David Joyce, Ohio Republican, told The Washington Times that he was reviewing the package. He declined to discuss specific concerns but previously told a NOTUS reporter that he would be concerned if the HIV/AIDS program cuts would impact medical treatments.

Rep. David Valadao, California Republican, told a PBS reporter that he had concerns about the rescissions package, but he declined to comment when The Times asked him about it.

Messrs. Newhouse, Joyce and Valadao are appropriators with more vested interest in spending approved by Congress than rank-and-file members who do not serve on the committee that digs into funding details.

If the rescissions package passes the House unchanged, it is not guaranteed to clear the Senate without tweaks.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican, said she opposes the funding cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and wants to remove that provision.

“They’re cutting prevention programs, and they should not be doing that,” she said. “It’s been extremely successful.”

• Kerry Picket contributed to this report.