Rounds Flips, Backs CPB Funding Rescission After OMB Finds Alternative for Tribal Stations
Supporters of the House-passed 2025 Rescissions Act (HR-4) bid to claw back $1.1 billion of CPB’s advance funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027 got some momentum Tuesday as Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he will back the measure. Rounds indicated he had reached a deal with the White House OMB on an alternative funding source to provide money to Native American radio stations, as expected (see 2507100071). Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee advanced its FY26 budget bill, which would cut NTIA’s annual funding (see 2507140052).
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Rounds said he and OMB “have an agreement … to resource” the radio stations’ money from funding Congress allocated during the Biden administration for Democrats’ Green New Deal. “We’ll take that money, and we’ll reallocate it back into the tribes to take care of these radio stations,” Rounds told reporters. He was one of several Senate Appropriations Committee Republicans who raised concerns about the CPB funding rescission during a June hearing with OMB Director Russell Vought (see 2506250058).
Vought slightly contradicted Rounds’ deal description after a Tuesday lunch meeting with Senate Republicans. OMB is working on an arrangement with senators “who have tribes in their states,” but the alternative funding is “not” coming from Green New Deal money, Vought told reporters. “There’s money that’s been around for a long time that we can purpose for what is needed.”
Vought indicated that the Trump administration will support striking HR-4’s proposed rescission of funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a bid to win support from Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine. “It’s substantially the same package and the Senate has to work its will, and we’ve appreciated the work along the way to get to a place where they’ve got the votes,” Vought said.
Collins, who is among other Republicans who raised concerns about the CPB clawback, told reporters she's still seeking changes to that language and indicated her office has “the problem of not having detailed account information” on how the White House will carry out HR-4’s other cuts. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he planned to hold an initial procedural vote Tuesday on HR-4 but hadn’t yet locked up enough GOP votes to ensure passage as of that afternoon. All 47 Senate Democrats are likely to vote against the measure.
Meanwhile, House Appropriations CJS voted 9-6, along party lines, to advance its FY26 funding bill. The measure would set NTIA’s annual funding at $47 million, 20% down from what the agency received for FY 2024 and FY 2025 (see 2403040083). Subpanel members largely avoided mentioning the NTIA cut during the markup session. The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced its FY26 Agriculture Subcommittee funding bill (S-2256) last week with more than $95 million in Agriculture Department-administered rural broadband funding, including $40 million for telemedicine and distance learning services and $35 million for the ReConnect program.
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., noted during the Tuesday CJS meeting that President Donald Trump “has frozen programs that provide seniors, veterans, rural families and people with disabilities with the skills and tools that they need to access the internet,” an apparent reference to the administration’s May move to block Digital Equity Act funding (see 2505090051).