The Big Story 

The White House is planning to ask Congress to approve more than $9 billion in funding cuts to a list of agencies President Trump has sought to eliminate.

© The Associated Press

That includes money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees PBS and NPR, money for USAID and agencies like the U.S. Institute of Peace, which Trump aimed to dismantle via an executive order signed in February.

The request cites various aspects of funding used by those organizations that do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities. It cites a PBS program from 2022 titled “Our League” about a transgender woman who comes out to members of their bowling league in Ohio.

It also cites numerous examples of funding from the State Department and USAID to be cut that are not in line with Trump’s agenda. Among those are $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda, $750,000 for reducing xenophobia in Venezuela, and $3 million for a children’s developmental television program in Iraq.

A White House official confirmed to The Hill that the package will be sent to Congress when lawmakers return from Easter recess. 

Simple majorities in both the House and Senate would need to vote to approve the rescission package in order to eliminate the congressionally approved funding. Republicans control both chambers, though their margin in the House is especially narrow.

The Hill’s Brett Samuels has more here.

Welcome to The Hill’s Business & Economy newsletter, I’m Aris Folley — covering the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

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Tax Watch 

Welcome to Tax Watch, a new feature in The Hill’s Business & Economy newsletter focused on the fight over tax reform and the push to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts this year.

Conservative tax group blasts tax hike for the rich

Conservative tax group Americans for Tax Reform is coming out hard against the idea of inserting a marginal tax increase for the highest earners into their extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which cut the top income tax rate to 37 from 39.6 percent.

“Keeping the top rate at 37 percent is a red-line,” John Kartch, the group’s vice president, wrote in a social media post over the weekend.

He argued that increasing the top tax rate would negatively affect businesses since many are structured as “pass-through” entities, which pass their tax bills directly onto their owners.

“Most pass-through business income is taxed at the top rates, so raising these rates would harm Main Street businesses engaged in just about every aspect of the economy,” he wrote in a Monday editorial.

Group president Grover Norquist told The Hill that increasing some rates while dropping others was a bad strategy for Republicans.

“Somebody comes in and says, ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea. Let’s be the tax increasing party.’ That’s what kept Republicans in the minority until 1994,” he said.

In ascending order of brackets, the 2017 cuts took marginal rates down from 15 to 12 percent, from 25 to 22 percent, 28 to 24 percent, 33 to 32 percent, and from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. The 10 percent rate for lower earners was left in place as was the 35 percent rate for some higher earners.

— Tobias Burns

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