What happened to the DOGE cuts? It took four months and a scolding from Ron DeSantis yesterday, but it finally looks like the process may get underway.
According to Politico, the first rescission request will get sent next week, but only for a small sampling of the DOGE targets:
The planned transmission of the “rescissions” bill, confirmed by two Republicans granted anonymity to describe the plans, comes after a long internal battle over how to formalize the cuts that have been made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.
The package set to land on Capitol Hill is expected to reflect only a fraction of the DOGE cuts, which have already fallen far short of Musk’s multi-trillion-dollar aspirations. The two Republicans said it will target NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid agencies that have already been gutted by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Speaker Mike Johnson said on X Wednesday that the House “is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand.” He said the House “will act quickly” on a package without saying when it might be submitted or what it might contain.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have been growing impatient as they await the White House request, after the Trump administration confirmed more than six weeks ago that it intended to send a more than $9 billion package of proposed cutbacks.
That seems to have been prompted at least in part by impatient House Republicans who have come under fire for supporting the “big beautiful bill” that didn’t cut spending or incorporate any DOGE cut targets. It may also come in part from a broadside by Ron DeSantis yesterday, calling everyone out for letting the swamp win (via Twitchy):
🚨 BREAKING: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just went OFF about no DOGE cuts being voted on by Congress.
“DOGE fought the swamp, and so far, the swamp has won.”
“DON’T tell me it can’t be done.”
“@ElonMusk went into this DOGE effort – he was getting LAMPOONED…firebombing his… pic.twitter.com/jYSwJS8doC
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 27, 2025
“We have a Republican congress and to this day, we’re at the end of May, past Memorial Day, and not one CENT in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress!”
“That’s one of the reasons why we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s another reason why we need term limits for members of Congress.”
There’s enough blame to spread around here. House Republicans could have incorporated those cuts into the reconciliation package, but chose not to do so, probably to set up that effort in the appropriation process in the next budget. The DOGE cuts would apply to this budget cycle as well as the next, and that can’t be done in reconciliation, at least not directly.
The White House bears more responsibility for the delay here. Technically, the executive branch cannot choose on its own to not spend money appropriated by Congress for specific functions. That kind of de facto line-item veto requires Congress to vote on the cuts through a rescission package. However, rescission has to start with a request from the president, and until today, none have been forthcoming. That has left some MAGA activists to wonder why Donald Trump hadn’t acted to secure these cuts, apart from EOs that are susceptible to court challenges.
The smaller rescission package raises some questions as well. This package appears to contain the most popular cuts — USAID and public broadcasting — which should sail through on simple-majority votes in both chambers. Like reconciliation, rescissions are not subject to filibusters. So why not tie more cuts to the first rescission request? It might signal that some of the other DOGE targets are getting opposition within Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill, and that might mean a fight that could doom the cuts. Better to get the most popular rescissions out of the way first, and then deal with the rest, perhaps, but that may be why Elon Musk seems to have lost interest in personally working on the DOGE project.
If so, then MAGA had better prepare for disappointment. We all wanted to see dramatic cuts to wasteful programs and bureaucracies operating with impunity. USAID and NPR are good starts, but if that’s all that gets cut, we have much bigger problems — as DeSantis made clear yesterday.
