In a narrow 51–48 vote early Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved a roughly $9 billion rescission package aimed at trimming federal spending—a major win for President Donald Trump’s effort to narrow government expenditures. The legislation, which cuts funding across a variety of programs including foreign aid and subsidies to public broadcasting, now moves back to the House of Representatives.

Two Republican senators—Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine—joined the Democrats in opposing the measure, arguing procedural concerns and transparency issues made it untenable.

The Senate version, trimmed slightly from the House’s earlier $9.4 billion bill, reinstated about $400 million in AIDS funding for Africa in order to secure enough votes for passage.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune characterized the vote as a key early step in shifting the tone in Washington toward fiscal responsibility following years of annual budget shortfalls near $2 trillion. “I appreciate the administration’s work in identifying unnecessary spending,” Thune said. “Now it’s the Senate’s turn to remove the waste. It’s a modest but meaningful start toward a long-delayed return to fiscal sanity.”

Senator Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressed broad support in principle for rescission measures—especially when integrated into the normal appropriations process. However, she said she could not back the White House’s proposal in its present form due to insufficient disclosure by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). “The text we got was extremely sparse and failed to clearly show which programs would be cut to reach the stated $9.4 billion target,” she said. “For instance, the bill includes $2.5 billion in reductions to the Development Assistance account—covering everything from basic education to water and sanitation to food security—but we have no idea how those reductions would be allocated.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski, likewise, raised objections over the pace and process of the legislation. She warned that Congress was appearing to simply rubber-stamp directives from the White House instead of exercising its own legislative authority. Both Murkowski and Collins were particularly concerned about cuts targeting public broadcasting—especially their impact in rural areas. During the so-called “vote-a-rama” session, each sought to insert amendments: Collins proposed scaling back the total cuts to just over $6 billion (though she ultimately did not bring the amendment herself), while Murkowski introduced her own bid to significantly reduce cuts to public broadcasting. Murkowski noted that in Alaska, public radio stations are often critical for emergency alerts—including tsunami warnings—and argued the cuts could hamper those vital services. “Today of all days, we should reject these misguided cuts to public broadcasting,” she said, after citing the region’s recent tsunami alert.

Some Republicans found the opposition puzzling. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin remarked that the proposed cuts amounted to less than a tenth of a percent of the federal budget and questioned the pushback over such a small reduction. “This should have been a chip shot,” he said. “I trust the OMB and the Trump administration—they aren’t going to eliminate important spending.”

Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who shepherded the bill through the Senate, rejected the notion that debate meant abdication of legislative responsibility. “This is exactly us doing our job—scrutinizing wasteful spending,” he said. “And perhaps what this will do is highlight where savings may lie so that when we get into the appropriations process in the next few months, we’ll be more focused on saving taxpayer money.”

With the Senate’s passage secured, the bill returns to the House, where lawmakers must decide whether to approve this amended version or insist on their original version. Should both chambers agree, the rescission package would make it to the president’s desk for final approval. While the dollar amounts may be modest in the context of the federal budget, supporters cast the bill as a symbolic and practical step toward a broader effort to curb spending—and signal a shift toward tighter fiscal discipline in Congress.