EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Riley Moore confident in first rescissions package, wants more to follow it

The clock is ticking on the White House’s first rescissions package, and Rep. Riley Moore (R., W.Va.) is dead-set on making sure Congress gets it across the finish line.

Moore spoke about his efforts on the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Right to the Point podcast, alongside Wade Miller of the Center for Renewing America. Moore said he is particularly excited for the package’s cuts to the “left wing propaganda network,” including NPR and PBS.

Moore, as the chair of the RSC’s Rescissions Working Group, has had a front row seat to the action, and he wants more of these once the first one is law.

For years, Democrats have argued that any cuts to PBS would be tantamount to killing Big Bird, but Miller explained that that’s not the case.

In fact, he said, “this only constitutes a very small portion of the funding that NPR and PBS get through all of their sources.” But the cuts still send a strong message.

“NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher has called President Trump a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath,” Miller said. “NPR’s survey of their D.C. editorial board found there were 87 registered Dems and zero registered Republicans.”

“And then NPR itself has requested and received money that was targeted at hiring not right of center voices, but just moderate voices, because even they recognize that their own broadcasting and journalism was extremely far-left biased,” he continued.

Congress’s rescissions package, which must be passed this week in order to take effect, also slashes billions of dollars from foreign aid. Moore clarified that most of the cuts are to woke propaganda, not to worthwhile expenditures;

“As it relates to the foreign aid aspect of this,” he said. “We’re not talking about digging wells and providing clean water and things like that. There's so many aspects of the foreign aid that take place in here that are where we’re trying to impose the worst cultural aspects of the United States, which would be some of these woke left agenda items, like transgender surgeries, on other countries.”

“We had $6 million for Net Zero cities in Mexico. Another issue that we had was $3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street,” Moore added.

These cuts, Moore said, are “what the American people voted for.”

American foreign assistance programs are valuable, but many have gone off the rails, he explained.

“The idea behind international development is that it’s not just for giving things to people. We are trying to develop partnerships with countries and not just impose a very small sliver of our society and their views upon these countries that certainly tend to be a lot more culturally conservative than, say, San Francisco.”

While $9 billion is a drop in the bucket given America’s fiscal standing, Moore is hopeful that this first package will have a “cumulative effect,” and that more are on the way.

“If we continue to do these rescissions, which I think we should absolutely do…[and if we are] implementing these DOGE cuts, which I think have been hugely helpful in trying to find waste, fraud and abuse,” American taxpayers will see significant wins, Moore said.

“I don't think you can look at [the first rescissions package] in singularity, and say, ‘well, it's only $9 billion,’” Moore explained. “When you start adding all this stuff up, and you start looking over the horizon in terms of trying to bend that curve, it does make a difference.”

From his vantage point on the House Appropriations Committee, Moore is confident that more cuts can come.

In fact, he said, “we’ve been in continued conversations” about more cuts already.