Republican lawmakers have told administration officials that pushing sweeping cuts through Congress will be difficult.
May 2, 2025 at 6:00 a.m
White House officials have in recent weeks brainstormed strategies for enshrining into law the government cuts implemented by billionaire Elon Musk’s team, aiming to turn the U.S. DOGE Service’s moves into lasting policy shifts.
So far, however, administration officials are running into resistance not just from Democrats, but also from congressional Republicans, who have in private conversations made clear that it would be difficult to codify even a small fraction of the measures that Musk’s team unilaterally implemented, according to lawmakers and several other people familiar with the discussions. GOP members of Congress have also raised concerns about tackling cuts as Republicans are trying to corral their rowdy and tiny majorities into extending tax cuts in one “big, beautiful bill” that President Donald Trump has demanded.
As the White House released its budget proposal Friday, the impasse over DOGE reflects a looming challenge for the administration’s vision of a sprawling overhaul of federal agencies. With both the courts and Congress refusing to provide legal cover to spending cuts that Musk forced through, the administration is running out of options for ensuring that its unilateral reductions take effect — potentially limiting DOGE’s lasting impact despite the disruption it brought to the government.
“None of the activities of the DOGE have heretofore had any impact on the budget, the debt or the deficit. Until Congress acts, those savings don’t really become real,” said Robert Shea, a Republican who served in senior political roles at the White House budget office.
The White House has to choose between implementing the funding Congress approved or violating federal budget law, triggering a constitutional crisis, according to Shea and several other budget experts.
The administration initially floated sending $9.3 billion of DOGE cuts to the Hill, which would encompass DOGE’s elimination of the main agency providing foreign aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as zeroing out some money for public broadcasting. The cuts would take just 51 votes in the Senate to pass, which means lawmakers would not need to worry about a Democratic filibuster to make the cuts permanent, under a provision in the 1974 budget law that allows requests for rescinded funding to be expedited. Musk has claimed $160 billion in savings so far.
This week, however, lawmakers began to raise concerns about even that smaller effort, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) telling colleagues she would have trouble supporting cuts to PEPFAR, an effort to combat HIV/AIDS abroad that other foreign-policy minded senators also support.
“I think it depends what’s in it precisely,” Collins said of the package’s chances of passing in the Senate. “For example, the $8.3 billion in foreign aid cuts, if that includes the women’s global health initiative as is rumored, if it cuts PEPFAR as it may, I don’t see those passing.”
Collins added that the Senate can amend the rescission request, which could fix those issues.
“Until we see precisely what it is, I think it’s really hard to predict,” she said.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said passing DOGE cuts could be difficult even in the Republican-controlled Congress, given the chamber’s tiny majority. He’s asked the administration to review the package before it is submitted to ensure the cuts have political support.
“Do you really want to roll out and have a failure?” Cole asked. “I think if they put it out there, they need to succeed at it.”
The roadblocks pose a major challenge for the White House on one of its top domestic priorities: cutting spending. Budget officials have for weeks brainstormed proposals for Republicans to give legal cover to the DOGE cuts, of which the $9 billion request was supposed to be only the first, according to two of the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal talks. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has long speculated that Congress would not approve the package, two of the people said.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a fiscal hawk, said he hoped the Senate would be able to pass such a small amount of cuts.
“If we can’t pass a $9 billion rescission package, we might as well all pack it up, give in and admit we’re all going to go bankrupt,” Paul said.
In Trump’s first term, a rescission package narrowly failed on the Senate floor, but Republicans’ majority in the chamber has grown since then.
“I think it’s tiny because they’re trying to get to the smallest number they can get and get a victory,” Paul said of the package, and urged the White House to send more rescissions.
Cole said he believes the first package focused on USAID funding is the “easiest” to pass.
“You got to see how that goes before you decide what else can we really do,” Cole said of any future rescissions packages.
Cole said his preference would be to make other cuts through the appropriations process, instead of through more rescissions proposals. Cole and Collins are eagerly awaiting the president’s budget request, which has been delayed and is likely to ask for steep cuts to agencies. Any appropriations bills will need Democratic votes in the Senate to pass, making it unlikely they will ultimately include dramatic cuts.
Several Republican senators have also been spooked by the idea of the freewheeling amendment process that would be triggered by a rescissions vote, which could force members to take some uncomfortable positions on issues. The timing is also difficult, because both chambers are racing to extend tax cuts initially passed in Trump’s first term, which will require holding together their fragile and small majorities.
The idea for Congress to pass Musk’s cuts dates to a closed-door lunch between lawmakers and Musk in March. Paul and others suggested to Musk that the administration should send billions of dollars in DOGE cuts to Congress in the form of a rescission package, which would take only a bare majority to pass the Senate. That would probably protect the cuts from being struck down by the courts. Musk reacted enthusiastically to the idea, according to several senators.
“He said unless Congress takes action on this, none of it is permanent,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said at the time.
Musk told reporters that it’s time for Congress and the rest of the Cabinet to step up, now that he is stepping back from DOGE.
“How much pain is the Cabinet and this Congress willing to take?” he said. “Because it can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
Trump campaigned on overturning traditional limits on his ability to cancel funding appropriated by Congress, saying he should be able to use a technique called “impoundment” to reduce or eliminate spending. Trump and DOGE have aggressively flouted Congress’s power with potentially illegal freezes on spending, and many of the moves have ended up in court, where judges have at least temporarily reversed some actions.
Trump has frozen or canceled at least $430 billion in funds since taking office, according to an estimate compiled by the top Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees.
“No American president has ever so flagrantly ignored our nation’s spending laws or so brazenly denied the American people investments they are owed,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) said in a statement releasing the tracker.
Some budget experts say the administration needs to follow budget law and either put cuts to a vote in Congress or abandon the effort to freeze money without lawmakers’ approval.
“They should put their money where their mouth has been — submit a rescission package that reflects the work to date of DOGE,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank.
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