Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is headed for a showdown this week with a group of Republican senators over a House-passed package that claws back $9.4 trillion in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and global public health programs.

Members of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, including Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), are not keen on cutting programs they have already funded through bipartisan appropriations bills.

A handful of senior Republican senators are worried about ceding even more power to the Trump administration, as Congress has already done by allowing President Trump to shutter or overhaul agencies such as U.S. Agency for International Development or impose steep tariffs on many of the nation’s trading partners without much pushback.

“I definitely want the PEPFAR cuts and the child and maternal health and other global health cuts removed, but I don’t know how Sen. Thune’s going to structure the process. He’s not shared that with me,” Collins told The Hill, referring to global program that President George W. Bush launched in 2003 to combat AIDS called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The Maine senator said she also had strong concerns about proposed cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“As I made very clear at the hearing, there’s a lot of what the Corporation for Broadcasting does that I support such as the 70 percent of the money that goes to local stations, they maintain the emergency alert system, they do local programing such as in Maine there’s a very popular high school quiz show,” she said.

The so-called rescissions package, which the Senate and House must send to Trump’s desk by July 18, would cut $8.3 billion from international aid........

© The Hill