House Rules Committee advances Senate amendment to HR 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025, amid debate over public broadcasting and foreign-aid cuts

The House Committee on Rules on Thursday advanced a rule to send HR 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025, back to the House floor with the Senate amendment, setting up final congressional action on a package that would rescind roughly $9,000,000,000 in unobligated federal funds.

The rule cleared the committee after floor managers said the package is a lawful, limited pullback of unspent funds and proponents insisted it is a step toward reining in what they described as waste. "We're here to get this legislation across the finish line into the president," the committee chairwoman said at the meeting's outset. "The money that we are clawing back in this rescissions package is the people's money," she added.

Why it matters: The package touches multiple policy areas — including public broadcasting, development assistance and global health — and several members warned the cuts are being proposed without sufficient program-level detail. Committee Democrats and some Republicans questioned whether Office of Management and Budget (OMB) decisions would shift authority over spending away from Congress.

Committee debate and top-line figures

Representative Diaz-Balart, who testified for the appropriations committee, told the Rules Committee the Senate amendment would rescind $9,000,000,000 and argued the package was intended to "prudently realign" spending to core national-security priorities. "The rescission package proposes to pull back $2,500,000,000" from the development assistance account in fiscal year 2025, he said, and the measure also includes cuts to global health programs, which some members said total about $500,000,000 in the rescission text.

Ranking Member DeLauro and other Democrats sharply disputed the approach. "This bill rips lifesaving support away from hungry, displaced, and sick people in developing countries and conflict zones," DeLauro said, adding that the package "will shut down rural television and radio stations, cutting off coverage of local news, eliminating emergency information like severe weather alerts." DeLauro and other Democrats warned that withholding program-level detail prevents Congress and the public from judging the effects of the rescissions.

Several members noted that the rescission authority invoked traces to the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a statutory process that permits rescinding unobligated balances subject to subsequent congressional approval or disapproval. Representative Diaz-Balart and other supporters pointed to prior rescissions and defended the use of the 1974 process; opponents argued the White House and OMB were effectively selecting which line items to cut without the usual appropriations oversight.

Program-level concerns and examples

Members cited specific programs they said were at risk in the package. Democrats and some Republicans flagged proposed rescissions affecting: - Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding, which members said provides roughly 70% of federal public-media dollars directly to locally owned stations; several Democrats warned that eliminating those federal grants could harm emergency-alert capabilities in rural areas and states such as Alaska. - Development assistance: witnesses and members referenced the $2.5 billion rescission from the international development assistance account and asked whether cuts would come from education, water and sanitation, or food-security lines. - Global health: Members noted a referenced $500,000,000 reduction in global-health-related funds, and asked which specific global-health programs (for example PEPFAR or other HIV/AIDS efforts) could be affected.

Representative Diaz-Balart responded that some of these line items were adjusted in subcommittee and that appropriators have continued work on the fiscal year 2026 appropriation bills that they said would provide further detail. "We're talking about $9,000,000,000," he said, and he described the rescission as a step toward ‘‘spending more prudently and in line with national-security priorities.’’

Process, authority and oversight

Multiple members raised constitutional and process questions. DeLauro called the OMB's handling of rescissions "a spectacular failure," saying the agency had not provided the detail necessary to evaluate the proposed cuts. She and others argued the approach risked eroding the Appropriations Committee's role in the power of the purse. Representative McGovern said members on both sides should expect greater transparency about which programs are being targeted.

Supporters said the rescission is a lawful tool and that comparable actions have occurred in past congresses. Representative Roy and others framed the $9,000,000,000 figure relative to total federal outlays, noting it amounts to a small fraction of overall spending, and urged the committee to approve the rule and let the full House act.

Committee action and votes

The committee ultimately agreed to a motion providing that the House consider the Senate amendment to HR 4 and concur. The motion was approved in committee by a recorded vote (9 yeas, 4 nays). During the meeting the committee considered several proposed amendments to the rule that would have struck specific rescissions (for example, proposals to preserve international disaster assistance, bilateral economic assistance, or funding for Corporation for Public Broadcasting); those amendment attempts were defeated by voice votes or recorded votes and did not change the rule reported from committee.

What happens next

Under the rule reported by Rules, the House is scheduled to consider the rescissions package under the terms set by the committee. If the House concurs in the Senate amendment, the bill would go to the president for signature. Several members on both sides pressed for more program-level detail from OMB and for continued oversight by the Appropriations Committee as the rescission authority is exercised.

Ending note

Members on both sides of the aisle said they view federal spending oversight as critically important, even as they sharply disagreed about which programs should be reduced and how much detail the public should see before votes. The Rules Committee's action sends HR 4 back to the House floor with the Senate amendment in place and sets the timetable for a final House vote that would determine whether the rescinded amounts become law.