Despite a republican majority of 53 seats out of 100, the vote was acquired at only 51 votes for and 48 against.
The US Senate adopted on Wednesday, under the leadership of the White House and the Doge of Elon Musk, a text that would allow the Trump administration not to have to spend some $ 9 billion in public funds, mainly intended for international aid.
Despite a republican majority of 53 seats out of 100, the vote was acquired at only 51 votes for and 48 against.
This text concerns nearly $ 8 billion which was intended for the USAID development aid agency, the rest must be mainly devoted to the public media NPR and PBS.
The PEPFAR World PEPFAR program to combat AIDS, created under George W. Bush, was initially concerned by these cuts, with $ 400 million canceled, but moderate senators have obtained this portion of the text already adopted in the House of Representatives.
The lower room will therefore have to vote again, before the end of the week, to approve the modified version.
The head of the Republican majority in the Senate, John Thune, put the impact of these cuts while greeting a necessary first step.
“We are talking about 1/10 of 1% of all federal spending here,” he told the press.
“When you have a debt of 36,000 billion dollars, we have to do something,” added the senator.
On the other side of the hemicycle, the Democrats are united to oppose the project.
Corey Booker, a democratic senator of New Jersey, denounced to AFP “a new example in the terrible way in which the spirit and the ideals of our Constitution are shaken” under Donald Trump.
At the time of the adoption of the text in the House of Representatives, the Republican President had welcomed $ 9 billion “intended for a waste -fed foreign aid”.
He had also attacked the NPR radio and the PBS television channel, “highly biased” against the Republicans according to him. The two public media are likely to lose $ 1.1 billion intended for them.
The American Constitution provides that the congress only has the power to allocate federal public funds. The text adopted in the House of Representatives thus aims to give force of law to the cuts identified by DOGE and requested by the White House, while these funds had already been approved previously by the Congress.