House panel takes up Trump plan to rescind $15 billion in spending

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a White House proposal to claw back roughly $15 billion in previously approved government spending.

The House Rules Committee added the revised rescissions package to its schedule for Wednesday afternoon, a day after the White House sent the latest package to Capitol Hill.

The bill was added to the House floor schedule for this week, with a GOP aide confirming to The Hill that the package would receive a vote Thursday.

“The President’s rescissions request is a straightforward approach to begin cleaning up a bloated federal budget and respecting hardworking taxpayer dollars,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement. 

{mosads}

The White House sent over its initial requests in May following discussions between McCarthy and President Trump.

The Trump administration has pushed to roll back spending after fiscal hawks tore into the price tag of the $1.3 trillion funding package Trump signed earlier this year.

The move to claw back funds under the Spending Cuts to Expired and Unnecessary Programs Act has been widely praised by conservatives, but Democrats and a handful of moderates have pushed back on the idea.

While proponents of the clawback measure say it’s a positive step toward getting government spending under control, critics argue it could prove problematic in future budget negotiations and eliminate funding for programs that could prove necessary in the future, even if they have currently gone untouched.

Specifically, opponents have blasted the administration’s decision to target unobligated funds within the Children’s Health Insurance Program, alleging cuts to could lead to the loss of coverage if enrollment is higher than expected.

McCarthy has insisted that the rollback wouldn’t put children at risk of losing coverage, citing a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said the $7 billion rollback wouldn’t impact the number of kids with insurance.

–Updated at 5:06 p.m.