ÐÔÊÓ½çAPP Republicans early Friday approved President Donald Trump's plan to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, vowing it was just the start of broader efforts by Congress to slash the federal budget.
The cuts achieve only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion in annual savings that tech billionaire and estranged Trump donor Elon Musk vowed to find before his acrimonious exit in May from a role spearheading federal cost-cutting.
But Republicans -- who recently passed a domestic policy bill expected to add more than $3 trillion to ÐÔÊÓ½çAPP debt -- said the vote honored Trump's election campaign pledge to rein in runaway spending.
"President Trump and House Republicans promised fiscal responsibility and government efficiency," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement just after the vote.
"Today, we're once again delivering on that promise."
Both chambers of Congress are Republican-controlled, meaning a party-line House of Representatives vote of 216 to 213, moments after midnight, was sufficient to rubber-stamp the Senate-passed measure.
Most of the cuts target programs for countries hit by disease, war and natural disasters but the move also scraps $1.1 billion that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.
Conservatives say the funding -- which goes mostly to more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, as well as to public broadcasters NPR and PBSÂ -- is unnecessary and has funded biased coverage.
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