Thune Has 5-GOP Hurdle on $9.4B Rescissions Bill

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has a 53-47 needle to thread this week on the $9.4 billion rescissions package passed by the House.

While it can move with a simple majority, five Senate Republicans are potentially pushing against President Donald Trump's desire for massive spending cuts, if only to maintain their power of the purse in their seats on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Democrats are always a no on anything Trump seeks, but they're adding the threat of turnabout for Senate Republicans moving another appropriations bill by a simple majority instead of the 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold.

Throw in the fact vulnerable Republicans are facing an Elon Musk America Party challenge in future elections if they bend to his wishes of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Thune is stuck between MAGA and the usual RINOs (Republicans in name only).

Even the obvious cutting of $1.1 billion in public funding of biased liberal media is facing GOP opposition, along with the $8.3 billion under the free foreign aid given away by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Trump failed to pass a $15 billion rescissions package in his first administration because of two RINOs, including then-Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who was behind the Russia hoax investigation.

Thune can still pass the $9.4 billion DOGE cuts package on the tiebreaking vote of Vice President JD Vance, but there will need to be a pulling in two of the five potential GOP holdouts.

1. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine

Collins wants to keep the foreign aid waste, fraud, and abuse spigots flowing for things like the free foreign aid through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

"I definitely want the PEPFAR cuts and the child and maternal health and other global health cuts removed, but I don't know how Sen. Thune's going to structure the process," Collins told The Hill.

"He's not shared that with me."

And Collins, one of the senators quickest to vote with Democrats, also has issues cutting the $1.1 billion for liberally bias public media, even if NPR, she admits, has a "decidedly partisan bent."

"As I made very clear at the hearing, there's a lot of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does that I support such as the 70% of the money that goes to local stations," Collins told The Hill. "They maintain the emergency alert system. They do local programing — such as in Maine, there's a very popular high school quiz show."

2. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

Rounds says he is a no on the rescissions unless the GOP can keep the spigot flowing for tribal radio stations in his state.

"At this stage of the game, I've already told them that I am a no unless we get this resolved one way or another," he told The Hill. "Native American radio stations that [get] caught in the crossfire.

"Other states have got the same issue, and it's in these very, very rural areas. It's about 90% of their funding."

Like Collins, Rounds is concerned about PEPFAR spigots, albeit less than some others, but it gives him a lever to press his agenda and his vote.

"It's one I would like to see resolved," he added. "I have not been putting the pressure on it; I think other people have."

3. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska

Murkowski has already cost Americans more money for her vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill, which flipped on Vance's tiebreaker this month, so expect her continued flimsy support for anything Trump to come into play again.

"I'm going to be very interested to see what amendments might come forward," Murkowski said last week. "We're working with others on the public broadcasting."

4. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.

Moran, another member of the Appropriations Committee, was a shaky OBBB vote because of concerns about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, "to make certain Kansas hospitals will not face any immediate cuts" to funding.

On the rescissions package, he told The Hill: "I'm going to see what's there and how the process works."

5. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

She had issues with taking away Green New Deal tax credits and is a potential holdout on rescissions, too, according to The Hill.

"We're talking about it," she said. "I'm very supportive, but we'll see what the details are."

A Sixth?

Then, according to The Hill, there is an unnamed GOP senator who is firmly behind keeping the power of appropriations in Congress' hands versus DOGE or the president – although it could be one of the five above.

"The bigger question is that I don't like the rescissions process at all," said the unnamed GOP senator granted anonymity by The Hill. "It basically gives the keys to the car to the administration to everything that we're doing on the appropriations side.

"We're not getting basic information. We're being told, 'This is what we want to do, and here's how much we want for it.'

"We're letting them call everything, and then rescissions are coming in on top of all of this?"

Finally, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has the threat of continuing the Democrats' blanket no on the 12 annual appropriations bills for 2026, which Trump, Republicans, and all Americans have come to expect anyway.

"Republicans' passage of this purely partisan proposal would be an affront to the bipartisan appropriations process," Schumer wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter last week after years of partisan obstruction of everything in the Trump agenda through that first administration and this one.

But Schumer is at least effective in spiking GOP fears for future appropriations.

"A number of Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill," Schumer said.