Part of the budgetary cuts identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were recently presented in the form of rescissions package, passage of which flirted with a key deadline this week in Congress.
The Senate got the bill passed by the skin of its teeth, then the House passed it as well, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk.
The achievement is being touted as a huge win for the administration.
There was a lot of resistance in the Senate over this bill, as there were quite a few Republicans who believed that the caucus as a whole was only pushing the measure through because that is what Trump wanted.
Trump’s arch-enemy within the party, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), was leading that resistance, stating, "I don't want us to go from one reconciliation bill to a rescissions package to another rescissions package to a reconciliation package to a continuing resolution."
She added, "We're lawmakers. We should be legislating. What we're getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, 'This is the priority, we want you to execute on it, we'll be back with you with another round.' I don't accept that."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was also against the legislation, but he decided to aid its passage simply due to the fact that the package was so small in scale, relatively speaking. He stated, "I suspect we're going to find out there are some things that we're going to regret. I suspect that when we do we'll have to come back and fix it, similar to what I'm trying to do with the bill I voted against a couple of weeks ago — the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill, that I think we're going to have to go back and work on."
With the clock ticking, the House had to get the bill through immediately after the Senate passed it to have it on Trump’s desk ahead of the deadline.
The bill passed, barely, with a final vote of 216-213.
There were two Republican defectors. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Turner (R-OH) crossed over, giving House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) just one vote to spare to see the legislation get through.
Now the bill will be sent to Trump for his signature.
Trump received the good news overnight, and he was quite happy to wake up knowing that the legislation had passed and was headed to the White House.
He posted, “HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED."
Trump continued, “REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”
I don’t want to downplay this achievement because it is a clear win for Trump, but in the overall scheme of things, this is nothing compared to what we were promised when DOGE was created. Instead of $2 trillion, then $1 trillion, we got $9 billion. We still have a long way to go to cut spending in the federal government, and the game plan needs to be changed so that we are cutting the right programs and strategically shrinking the ranks of employees, not just randomly eliminating jobs for the sake of a headline.
