A move by the Trump administration to claw back nearly $15 in spending from the massive March 23 budget bill has failed in the Senate in a vote eerily similar to last summer’s vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The rescission measure would have hit the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) hardest at $7 billion.
From CHIP, the administration’s proposal would have canceled $5.1 billion authorized in 2015 to bolster reimbursements to states for children’s health care costs, and another $1.9 billion from a contingency fund for states with funding shortfalls because of higher-than-expected enrollment.
The rescission measure had passed the House of Representatives on a narrow vote earlier this month.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was one of two Republicans to join Democrats to opposing the measure, 48-50. Collins was also a dissenter against Obamacare repeal.
After the Senate vote, Budget Director Mike Mulvaney said, “The American people should be asking their representatives in Washington one simple question: If they cannot pass good-government legislation to recapture unnecessary funds, how can we ever expect them to address Washington’s staggering debt and deficit problem?”
The March budget totaled $1.3 trillion, spread across 2,232 pages of text. CHIP was given a ten-year reprieve after its funding had expired with the federal budget this past Sept. 30, 2017.