House Votes to Trim Unused Funding, a Gesture of Fiscal Restraint

WASHINGTON — With annual budget deficits nearing $1 trillion, the House took a modest step Thursday to broadcast fiscal responsibility, narrowly approving a White House plan to rescind nearly $15 billion in unspent funding that had been approved in past years.

The bill would reduce actual spending by a total of $1.1 billion from 2018 to 2028, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a small act of penance after Congress approved a $1.5 trillion tax cut in December, then a $1.3 trillion spending plan in March whose heft exasperated conservatives. The new bill would have little practical effect, given that much of the funding was not expected to be spent anyway.

And the reduction in spending would be virtually imperceptible, as the total deficit from 2018 to 2028 is projected to exceed $13 trillion.

The House voted 210-206 to pass the measure, a so-called rescissions package. The effort to rescind leftover funds had been championed by a leading contender to be the next House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

“President Trump’s spending cut request is a straightforward and smart way to trim a bloated federal budget,” said McCarthy, who is the House majority leader.

Democrats were united in opposition. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said that after last year’s tax cuts, the bill “is like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.”

President Donald Trump has touted the package as “historic.”

But Republicans in the Senate have largely not leapt to embrace the effort to cancel unused funding. It was not clear whether the plan would go anywhere in that chamber.

“We’ll evaluate it,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, told reporters, passing up the opportunity to express any enthusiasm about the measure.

The Trump presidency has been a bleak period for those concerned about the growing debt, especially after Republicans eagerly approved last year’s tax overhaul that was projected to widen deficits.

The deficit is expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and the national debt has topped $21 trillion.

Among the funding to be rescinded is $7 billion for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP — a curious move in an election year, at least from a public relations standpoint. But the budget office said canceling that funding would not change what the government spends on CHIP or affect the number of children with coverage.