DOGE Do: Will The Bell Toll for PBS, NPR in Rescission?

Has the last call come at the federal trough for public broadcasters? It depends on whether Congress acts to take the first steps outlined by DOGE, even though it may amount to baby steps at the moment.

At issue are funds already appropriated by Congress for various agencies and purposes. The US DOGE Service has already identifed billons of dollars in waste and fraud, but the agencies only have limited power to take the funds back. That requires the White House to submit a rescission request to Congress, where simple majorities are all that are necessary to grant the clawbacks. 

Top on the list when Congress returns from its Easter recess will be a rescission request of over $9 billion. That’s relative chump change in a budget that runs around $6 trillion, but its more of an opening step. However, that includes over a billion dollars already allocated to public broadcasters such as PBS, NPR, and local stations:

The White House will soon ask Congress to cancel $9.3 billion already approved for foreign aid initiatives, public broadcasting and other programs, according to a White House official granted anonymity to speak freely.

Congress is expected to receive that so-called rescissions request when lawmakers return from their two-week recess later this month. To nix the funding, the House and Senate will each have to vote at a simple-majority threshold to approve the formal ask.

The White House package is expected to target funding for the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Institute of Peace and other programs, along with assistance to PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This involves current funding, including that in the recent CR. It would defund all of the entities under the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), making them essentially independent and forcing them to compete on an equal basis with other media outlets. NPR and PBS have claimed that they get very little of their funding from the federal government directly (the claim is usually ~3%), but that is misleading. They get significant funding from local public-broadcasting TV and radio stations that receive federal funding too. That’s why this rescission will claw back funds on all streams.

There are a couple of caveats, however. Because this rescission only involves currently appropriated funds, it still leaves open the possibility of re-funding CPB and its satellites in the next budget cycle. Right now Congress is working on the reconciliation package to cement Trump’s 2017 tax cuts into permanent place and some of their other priorities, but they will begin working on the regular-order appropriations bills soon. Democrats could gum up the works at that point to demand funding for CPB at some level, and some Republicans might be willing to use it as leverage for their funding priorities. This rescission might just put CPB into cryogenic freeze, so to speak, for a few months — although the question of how to resuscitate it later might prove too complex to work.

Although even that may be assuming too much. A source in the CPB told the New York Times that it has planned for a funding clawback:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is “forward-funded” two years to insulate it from political maneuvering, and a sizable chunk of the money for 2025 has already been paid out to public broadcasters in the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.

So a rescission may not even put it in cryogenic freeze. It does seem curious how a federal-funds recipient can stash their cash past a budget cycle, but perhaps that’s an issue for later. One has to wonder how many of the NGOs and other recipients of funds in this rescission have made similar plans with taxpayer money. 

Nevertheless, a rescission is still worth pursuing, even if it will require political discipline through the next couple of budget cycles to make it stick. It may not be a done deal, though, as Congress has a time limit — and some Republicans may not like all of the targets for spending cuts:

Republican senators from farm states, for example, have objected to cutting USAID programs that buy wheat and other products from U.S. farmers to provide food aid for hungry populations abroad.

If Congress doesn’t approve the recissions request within 45 days of receiving it, Trump will be legally required to release the money back to the agencies.

The farm spending may be particularly sensitive, given the impact that tariffs will take on American grain exports. One has to think that the White House has been crafting the rescission targets with this in mind, and with some consultation with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Trump’s one attempt at rescission in his first term failed over a lack of coordination with Senate Republicans, and hopefully lessons were learned. 

This will be a test for the GOP on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on just how much intestinal fortitude they possess on the issue of spending cuts. Nine billion dollars shouldn’t require much, so if they can’t muster enough for these cuts, don’t expect too much to change in the next budget either.