When asked on Sunday if Senate Republicans could match the House's proposed $1.5 trillion in cuts for the upcoming budget reconciliation package, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., suggested the upper chamber is aiming higher with $2 trillion in cuts.
Some Republican members of Congress would say this is an opportunity to "'cut into that $37 trillion in debt,'" Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said. "Do you believe that you will be able to match what the House has identified — $1.5 trillion in spending cuts? Because so far the Senate has come up with, what with, $3 to 4 billion in spending cuts? Tell us now definitively, do you believe you'll be able to match the House's spending cuts?"
"Well, I do," Barrasso replied. "And, actually, our number's a little higher than that of what we'd like to get to. The American people know the government is too big; it spends too much. They saw this list of things that have come out, the spending under the bloated budgets of the Biden administration for the last four years that have given us the highest inflation in 40 years."
The senator then fired off a number of programs from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which for fiscal 2024 had a budget of $21.7 billion. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in March that a review of USAID had been completed, and roughly 80% of the program would be cut.
"In consultation with Congress," Rubio said, "we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping ... to be administered more effectively under the State Department."
In his appearance on "Sunday Morning Futures," Barrasso told Bartiromo that the Senate's "aim is $2 trillion."
"I don't know that we're going to get there," he noted. "We're going to match whatever the House is able to do. We need to get a bill past the House, past the Senate, and to the president's desk so we can make a difference in the lives of the American people and get this country back on track and get more money into their pockets."
Nick Koutsobinas ✉
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.
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