After clearing a procedural hurdle late on Tuesday, the Senate is poised to pass a funding clawback bill inspired partly by Elon Musk’s DOGE. The bill was pared down so as to rescind a mere $9 billion, which will come mostly from cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting. 

The rescissions package, as it is known in legal parlance, was sent to Congress by the White House last month. It included a request to cancel $9.4 billion in funding for foreign aid — mostly from the remnants of what used to be USAID — and money for stations like National Public Radio and PBS. 

One sticking point for a small band of Republicans was a cut in logistical funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program established by President Bush to combat the transmission and severity of HIV and AIDS in the developing world. 

Senator Collins, a strong supporter of the program, successfully negotiated to keep $400 million for PEPFAR’s operations out of the rescissions package. That brought the total amount of proposed rescinded funds down to $9 billion. 

Ultimately, Ms. Collins did not vote for a procedural measure to begin debate and the amendment process on the rescissions bill when it came up on Tuesday night. She was joined by Senators Murkowski and Collins in opposing the measure, which forced Vice President Vance to make an appearance on Capitol Hill to break the 50–50 tie. 

Ms. Collins’s problem with the bill wasn’t the amount of money being cut, nor was it the specific programs that were targeted. She says the White House Office of Management and Budget was simply too vague in describing the exact programs that would be cut in specific departments, agencies, or offices. 

“Nobody really knows what program reductions are in it,” Ms. Collins, the chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, said in a statement after her no vote. “That isn’t because we haven’t had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that OMB has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process.”

“To carry out our constitutional responsibility, we should know exactly what programs are affected,” Ms. Collins said. 

Ms. Murkowski told reporters that she is simply frustrated that Congress has spent the first six months of its two-year governing window to simply work on party-line spending and tax cut bills. She said she is worried that the Republican majority is just going to continue bouncing from one reconciliation bill — like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — to rescissions to short-term government funding deals. 

“I don’t want us to go from one reconciliation bill to a rescissions package to another rescissions package to a reconciliation package to a continuing resolution,” the Alaska senator said. 

Senator McConnell told Politico on Tuesday night that he isn’t comfortable handing the White House a “blank check” to cut whatever they would like. 

“They won’t tell us how they’re going to apply the cut,” Mr. McConnell said of White House staff. “I want to make it clear I don’t have any problem with reducing spending. … They would like a blank check is what they would like, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

The Senate will begin the debate and amendment process at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. Should they choose to do so, Democrats can drag the process out well into Wednesday night by using their debate time and by offering amendments. The bill will then be sent back to the House, where it must receive a vote by Friday evening.