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Republicans love Trump’s spending cuts. Just not in their states
Feb. 12, 2025 at 1:31 pm
A farmer harvests wheat in Enid, Okla., last June. Even as they praise the president’s unilateral actions to slash federal spending, GOP lawmakers have quietly moved to seek carveouts or exemptions for their own constituents. (Desiree Rios/The New York Times)
By
Catie Edmondson
and
Maya C. Miller
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress have responded to President Donald Trump’s unilateral moves to freeze federal spending, dismantle programs and fire civil servants with a collective shrug, staying mostly silent and even praising him as he circumvents the legislative branch.
But in recent days, as his slash-and-burn campaign to remake the government has begun to affect their states and districts, some Republicans have tried to push back in subtle ways. They have sought carveouts and special consideration for agriculture programs, scientific research and more, even as they cheered on Trump’s overall approach.
Their swift and quiet moves to protect their own pieces of the federal spending pie without critiquing Trump are an early indication of the political realities that could pose obstacles to the president’s push. Many programs he has targeted for cost-cutting have entrenched constituencies in Congress built up by Republicans over many years. It is one reason that shrinking the size of the federal government will be a mammoth task, despite the GOP’s posture of maximum deference to Trump.
More on the Trump administration Take Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, the successor to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, who retired in 2022 at age 88 as one of the last big-time pork barrel legends in Congress. Shelby, Britt’s former boss, was renowned for his record of steering billions of dollars in federal spending to his state over a 36-year career.
Britt was one of the first Republicans to raise concerns at home soon after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research grantees, a move that has since been paused by a federal judge. Britt, whose state has received more than $518 million in NIH grants for projects currently active there, told a local news outlet that she would press administration officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions” such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
In the House, a group of Republicans from farm states and districts introduced legislation this week that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The bill would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from U.S. farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from USAID to the Agriculture Department. The lawmakers argued that their legislation fulfills the spirit of what Trump calls his “mandate” to slim down the federal bureaucracy and make it more efficient.
“By moving Food for Peace to USDA, the program can continue to equip American producers to serve hungry people while providing more transparency and efficiency as to how taxpayer dollars are stewarded,” Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kan., the lead sponsor of the House bill, said in a statement Tuesday.
After Trump ordered a 90-day freeze of foreign aid shipments, Sen. Jerry Moran, also of Kansas, was among the only Republicans who publicly urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to quickly resume foreign food aid shipments abroad so U.S. growers, including sorghum farmers in his state, would not lose out on a major market for their surplus product. U.S. growers sold about $713 million of goods to the Food for Peace program in the 2023 fiscal year.
And in a letter last week to the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, asked the Trump administration to direct federal agencies not to apply any funding restrictions from Trump’s executive order targeting diversity programs to American Indian tribes.
Not all Republicans are pushing back on Trump’s efforts to slash federal spending, even when those cuts hit programs in their states.
Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, whose state has received more than $1 billion in NIH research grants, said he supported the move to cut overhead costs, arguing that taxpayer money should not be used to cover expenses like lighting, heating and building maintenance.
“If you ask the average American, ‘We’re spending a billion dollars to cure childhood cancer; how much of a billion dollars should go toward curing childhood cancer?’ they’d probably say a billion,” Moreno said. “The idea that 60% goes toward indirect costs, overhead, is insane.”
The NIH said that less than half of that, about 26% of grant dollars it distributed last year, went to such costs.
The GOP lawmakers seeking reprieves from Trump’s cuts are quick to embrace his message that federal spending is out of control, while arguing that their state’s or district’s slice of government funding is critical.
Britt said in an interview that she had recently talked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to be health secretary, to impress upon him the importance of protecting vital medical research taking place in Alabama that she said “ultimately saves lives.”
“He said he absolutely understood that we need to keep both research and innovation alive and well, and you know that you have to have the best technology and laboratory facilities to be able to do that,” Britt said, speaking of Kennedy. “He committed to continuing that conversation and working to make sure that we find a real solution moving forward.”
Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, whose state includes two of the largest recipients of NIH grants in Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he agreed with the Trump administration’s move to limit the amount of taxpayer money used for overhead costs. But he conceded that the universities would likely need time to adjust to their new financial reality.
“There’s great research being done by all of our institutions; we need to protect that,” Budd said. “I think the White House wants to protect that.”
Still, Democrats are working to capitalize on the potential political impact of Trump’s spending cuts by attacking Republicans in Congress, especially those from competitive districts, for swallowing moves that harm their constituents.
Related Farmers on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds (Feb. 10, 2025)
House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ main political action committee, sent out a message this week titled, “Vulnerable House Republicans Hang Farmers Out To Dry,” which noted how the funding freeze was hitting farmers around the country and singled out several Republican lawmakers by name, including Reps. David Valadao of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.
This story was originally published at nytimes.com. Read it here.
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