The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made commendable progress in identifying areas of waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal government. But failure by congressional Republicans to codify cuts to these items and other wasteful spending into law threatens to jeopardize the watchdog group’s success.
Amid the backdrop of DOGE’s fraud-finding expedition are ongoing negotiations among House and Senate Republicans to pass a budget reconciliation package that includes President Trump’s legislative priorities, such as tax cuts and resources for border enforcement. As defined by Ballotpedia’s Briana Ryan, “Budget reconciliation is a term for the legislative process that bypasses the [60-vote] filibuster to approve a package of legislation in Congress that changes spending, revenues, or the debt limit.”
While many Republicans have been quick to glom onto DOGE and profess support for its work, few seem to be interested in actually stopping the wasteful spending that’s plagued the federal government for years. Case in point: the Senate GOP’s latest “vote-a-rama.”
In the early hours of Friday morning, the upper chamber held votes on various amendments to Senate Republicans’ $340 billion reconciliation bill. According to Breitbart News, the package — which included provisions aimed at “secur[ing] the southern border, unleash[ing] domestic energy production, [and] other priorities” — is one half of the Senate GOP’s “two-bill strategy” for reconciliation.
(Trump recently endorsed the “big beautiful bill” being negotiated in the House that includes the aforementioned priorities and tax cuts).
Among the amendments proposed for the Senate’s reconciliation package was a measure introduced by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that sought to cut federal spending by $1.5 trillion. The Kentucky Republican noted that “Americans will pay dearly for Congress’s inability to say no to the welfare and warfare state,” and that continued reckless spending practices “will mean confiscatory tax rates, high inflation, rising interest rates, and a weak economy.”
“[I]f we were fiscally conservative, why wouldn’t we take the savings from Elon Musk and DOGE and move it over here and help with the border?” Paul said on the Senate floor last week. “Why would we be doing a brand new bill to increase spending by $340 billion?”
And yet, when given the chance to slash a small fraction of the federal spending that’s ballooned since Congress’s Covid spending spree, what did most Senate Republicans do? They sided with Democrats to defeat Paul’s amendment (76-24).
Meanwhile, the situation on the House side remains cloudy.
On Monday night, the House Rules Committee advanced its budget resolution to the full floor for consideration.
According to Fox News, “The bill aims to increase spending on border security, the judiciary and defense by roughly $300 billion, while seeking at least $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts elsewhere.” The proposed legislation, the report noted, “also provides $4.5 trillion to extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, which expire at the end of this year.”
The measure faces uncertainty on the full floor, in part due to concerns among some Republican members about whether the bill (in its current form) does enough to offset prospective deficits in the long run.
Whether Republicans ultimately pass a reconciliation package that includes substantial spending cuts remains to be seen. But the writing on the wall should not give voters confidence in their willingness to do so.
What the GOP has shown time and again is a complete disinterest in disrupting the status quo spending in Washington. Even while inflation was wreaking havoc on American households during the Biden administration, many congressional Republicans were perfectly willing to add to the problem by supporting major spending bills that further increased the country’s growing national debt.
With trifecta control of the federal government and Trump and DOGE enjoying net-positive approval from the American public, there is no better opportunity for Republicans to shrink the bureaucracy and slash wasteful spending. Whether it’s eliminating USAID and the Education Department or repealing Biden’s wrongly named “Inflation Reduction Act,” the possibilities for substantial cuts are too numerous to be ignored.
The reality is that, as promising as DOGE’s continued discoveries seem, the work it’s doing in uncovering government abuse of taxpayer dollars will be meaningless unless Republicans get serious about Washington’s spending problem. Voters gave the GOP a mandate, and it’s past time they fulfilled it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Jesus Christ is King
