General Discussion

Congress Is Spurning Many of Trump’s Proposed Spending Cuts

Jan. 14, 2026

Congress is quietly rejecting almost all of the deepest cuts to federal programs that President Trump requested for this year, turning back his efforts to slash funding for foreign aid, global health programs, scientific research, the arts and more in a bipartisan repudiation of his spending plans. The latest rejection of his budget blueprint came on Wednesday, after the House voted 341 to 79 to pass a pair of bills to fund the State and Treasury Departments, as well as other foreign aid programs, providing money for agencies that Mr. Trump had proposed eliminating entirely.

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“These are bills that reject the devastating cuts Trump demanded in his deeply unserious budget he sent to Congress about a year ago,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “When just about every secretary came before our Appropriations Committee to advocate for those Trump funding cuts, I made clear to them I planned to rip up his budget and write a new one — and that is exactly what we are doing.”

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Whether the administration ultimately spends the money that lawmakers appropriate is still an unanswered question. Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has made clear that he believes the president has the authority to disregard congressional directives in order to spend less money than lawmakers approved.

And members of Congress omitted language they had considered including in the legislation aimed at limiting Mr. Trump’s ability to circumvent them. For instance, lawmakers ultimately jettisoned language that senators had tucked into the bill to fund the Commerce and Justice Departments that would have required administration officials to notify lawmakers 30 days before canceling federal contracts or enacting mass layoffs of federal employees. That provision also would have restricted agencies’ ability to use funds approved for one purpose for another, a maneuver known as “reprogramming.”

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