Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., told Newsmax on Wednesday that Congress had to pass a rescissions package to reduce spending, saying that the $9 billion cut is "a drop in the bucket" compared to the full federal budget.
The Senate on Wednesday passed a rescissions package, after Vice President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote, that will cut $9 billion from the federal budget, including cuts to PBS and NPR, but leave out roughly $400 million in proposed cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, an international AIDS and HIV prevention program that's helped millions of Africans receive lifesaving treatment.
Smith, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, told "National Report," when asked about the funding for PEPFAR, that "the three 'no' votes over in the Senate" against the version of the bill that included the cuts to PEPFAR "happen to be the three highest ranking appropriators on the Republican side."
He added, "Maybe this is something with history that they have a long-term support. I'm unaware and unsure. But we do know that there's a lot of wasteful government spending. And we need to get our house in order."
"In the one big, beautiful bill, we eliminated $1.5 trillion worth of mandatory spending, the largest cut in U.S. history. This is $9 billion. We need to continue to do so. It's a small drop in the bucket, but let's get it all done," said Smith.
He later added, "I hope that Congress will get serious about spending. The problem is that we only have one party that cares about fiscal responsibility. Not one Democrat in the House or the Senate has been supportive of us cutting wasteful spending. So it's only done by Republicans. And we do have the smallest margins ever in the history of a party that's in power."
Smith said, "If you lose two people in the House of Representatives, you cannot pass something. If you lose more than three in the United States Senate, you cannot pass something. So if the Democrats would join in and actually care about fiscal certainty, we might be able to do more."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.