Merkley Statement on Senate Republicans Rubber Stamping the Trump Administration’s Disastrous DOGE Cuts

Senate Republicans Green-lit Cuts to Foreign Aid, Local Public Broadcasting; Trump Administration’s Actions of Impounding Funds Remain Illegal

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Senate Appropriations and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, released the following statement after Senate Republicans capitulated to the disastrous cuts proposed by the Trump Administration and intended to appease Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).” This package will dismantle America’s foreign assistance infrastructure, including by effectively dissolving the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and gutting global health, humanitarian, and development programs that save lives and advance America’s interests. This package also strips funding from PBS and NPR.

“What Senate Republicans did today is give the Administration permission to trample on Congress’s authority and continue its reckless pursuit of impounding funds – all by gutting an overwhelmingly bipartisan funding bill with a partisan vote.

“This does nothing to get rid of ‘waste, fraud, and abuse.’ Dismantling USAID makes America less safe and damages our leadership in helping countries tackle important issues like nutrition and fighting the three big killers in the world – tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS. These cuts also deeply undermine America’s influence around the world from trade to national security. And defunding national, fact-based broadcasting outlets like NPR and PBS, shutters local and rural news and radio stations that hardworking families rely on for the news and critical weather updates in times of emergency.

“It is past time that Congressional Republicans hold Trump and DOGE accountable for their illegal actions to impound funds and subvert Congress’s power of the purse, because Trump will stop at nothing to gut services families rely on in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans,” said Ranking Member Jeff Merkley.

The passage of this rescissions package does not negate the fact that the Trump Administration has violated the law. It remains clear that the Administration has taken several illegal and unconstitutional actions to impound funds.

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