Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
This week, Congress passed Donald Trump’s request to claw back $9 billion in approved federal spending, including funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined last night to discuss the president’s rescissions request—and what its approval may signal about future appropriations.
“What I think will be remembered of this vote is it was a test case in whether” Republicans in Congress “could change the way the government appropriates money,” Michael Scherer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said last night.
Historically, Scherer explained, even when one party controls both chambers of Congress, 60 votes are still required to pass a budget through the Senate. “That means you need a bipartisan process,” he continued. But this differs from a rescissions request, which can pass with only 51 votes. The Trump administration’s goal, Scherer argued, is to break away from a bipartisan budgeting process “by making it a purely partisan” one. This, Scherer said, could “change dramatically the whole way the federal government’s been budgeted for years.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Leigh Ann Caldwell, the chief Washington correspondent at Puck; Stephen Hayes, the editor of The Dispatch, Meridith McGraw, a White House reporter at The Wall Street Journal; and Michael Scherer, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.
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