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Vought Defends the $9.4 Billion Rescissions Request Before Senate Appropriations, Jun. 25, 2025

June 25, 2025 · PBS NewsHour · 2:51:45

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What happened

OMB Director Russell Vought testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 25, 2025, on the special message the President transmitted on June 3 under the Impoundment Control Act, in PBS NewsHour’s full recording. Chair Susan Collins opened by framing the request: $9.4 billion in previously appropriated funds proposed for rescission, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $8.3 billion for foreign assistance. Protesters interrupted Vought’s opening statement, as Forbes Breaking News’ clip of the hearing shows.

Under questioning, Vought said the administration had identified more than the $9.4 billion at issue — pointing to $163 billion in fiscal 2026 spending the budget proposed to cut — and declined to rule out further rescissions packages, telling the committee that end-of-year ‘pocket rescissions’ were among the options on the table under the law, as he stated it. He specified the package’s two global-health reductions as $500 million for family planning and $400 million for PEPFAR. The criticism was bipartisan in part: Collins pressed the PEPFAR cut, citing the program’s 26 million lives saved, and the committee’s Democrats charged that a pocket rescission would be an illegal end-run around Congress’s Article I power of the purse — criticism carried here as it was delivered at the hearing.

Why it matters

This hearing is the rescissions fight in full: the first DOGE-codifying package, the Impoundment Control Act process Vought promised at his confirmation to use, and the pocket-rescission doctrine that became the central legal dispute of his tenure as budget director.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the $9.4 billion rescissions request as Vought defended it on June 25, 2025 ($1.1 billion public broadcasting / $8.3 billion foreign assistance) — flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, ‘WATCH LIVE: OMB Director Vought testifies on Trump’s rescission request in Senate hearing,’ June 25, 2025 (video m5Sb-KU-hNI); hearing transcript via The Hill’s full carry (CVGWbfMuSKQ) through Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, never republished verbatim). Alternate sources recorded in the index: The Hill (CVGWbfMuSKQ) and Forbes Breaking News’ interruption clip (Qj5AJgw2pKQ). Vought’s June 3, 2025 Capitol Hill gaggle confirming the package (0Zf-0jmTIOY) is banked in this lane’s research store.