House Budget Chief Calls On Lawmakers To Shrink ‘Bloated Bureaucracy,’ Skyrocketing National Debt

'Usher in the golden age'

Trump’s budget battle plan can’t be all bark, no bite



If Republicans keep squandering opportunities like budget reconciliation and other must-pass bills, they still have one more tool to cut spending without facing a Senate filibuster: the rescissions process.

To make it work, though, Trump must wield his influence more effectively. He needs to pressure establishment Republicans to support spending cuts with the same intensity he uses to push Freedom Caucus members into backing bloated budgets and debt-ceiling hikes.

If the rescissions process is going to matter, Trump must treat it like a weapon — not a bargaining chip.

Under sections 1012 and 1017 of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the president may submit a request to Congress to rescind budget authority from specific accounts he deems unnecessary. That request triggers expedited consideration in Congress, with debate protected from filibuster once the proposal hits the calendar.

In the meantime, the president can freeze spending in the targeted account for up to 45 days while Congress considers the request.

Administration officials have begun dangling the rescissions process in front of conservatives as a consolation prize — hoping to win support for bloated budget bills, a record debt-ceiling hike, and a likely toothless reconciliation package. Their pitch: Whatever passes now can be clawed back later through presidential rescission requests, coordinated with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), and without Democratic input.

On paper, the strategy has logic. Trump wants to avoid shutdowns and default drama but believes he can trim spending quietly on the back end. The problem? The same GOP establishment that resists spending cuts during appropriations will still stand in the way after the fact — unless Trump finally targets the left flank of his own party instead of the right.

In early May, the House plans to vote on the Trump administration’s first rescissions package — $9.3 billion in cuts, mostly from foreign aid and defunding NPR and PBS. That’s a good start. It should be applauded.

But let’s be honest: $9.3 billion is pocket change compared to what Congress plans to spend. The upcoming budget reconciliation bill could add $5 trillion in new debt. Even defense spending alone is set to grow by more than $150 billion.

If the rescissions process is going to matter, Trump must treat it like a weapon — not a bargaining chip. And he must finally pressure the real problem in Washington: Republicans who talk like conservatives but vote like Democrats.

Unless Trump applies real pressure on Republican holdouts — especially in the Senate — most of the rescissions package will stall. Cutting NPR and PBS may be a layup, but $8 billion of the proposed cuts target USAID and other foreign aid programs. Those enjoy bipartisan backing, including from Republicans like Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

We’ve seen this dumb movie before. In 2018, Trump sent Congress a $15 billion rescissions package. Nineteen House Republicans defected, but the bill passed 210-206 thanks to a larger GOP majority. The Senate, however, killed it — 48-50 — after just two GOP defections.

Trump tweeted about the bill two days before the House vote. But nowhere in the public record did he threaten consequences for Republican dissenters. He never punished the defectors, and he quickly abandoned the rescissions strategy. Debt piled up for the rest of his term. The moment passed. History rolled on.

This time must be different.

Trump must match the pressure he puts on conservatives — urging them to swallow bad front-end budget deals — with equal, if not greater, pressure on Republican incumbents who oppose back-end spending cuts. No more free passes.

He should submit a rescissions package targeting climate slush funds and dare any Republican to oppose it. Then name names. If they side with green energy programs over fiscal responsibility, they should face the threat of a primary challenger. No exceptions.

If Trump refuses to campaign forcefully for his own priorities, the rescissions process will yield nothing more than symbolic cuts — token reductions that don’t even come close to offsetting the deficit spending he’s already signed off on.

Take the current request. It proposes clawbacks like $6 million for energy-efficiency programs in Mexico, $4 million for migrants in Colombia, $4 million for legume systems research, $3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street, nearly $1.2 million for LGBTQ initiatives, and $1 million for a voter ID program in Haiti.

Sure, Republicans will hold press conferences, wave these absurd line items in front of cameras, and vote to rescind them. But let’s not kid ourselves: Shaving a few million dollars from programs no one knew existed doesn’t even approach the scale of the problem.

When Congress passes trillion-dollar deficits and then touts million-dollar cuts, it’s not leadership. It’s performance.

And the country can’t afford another act.

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How Democrats use health care alarmism to cling to power



When the sky’s red at night, we’re in for mild weather. When Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, we’re in for six more weeks of winter. And when Democrats start losing, we’re in for a lot of fearmongering about health care.

Rep. Al Green’s (D-Texas) outburst during President Trump’s address to Congress last week was the latest example of Democratic health care alarmism. The Texas congressman waved his cane and shouted that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid before the sergeant-at-arms escorted him from the floor. The House later censured him for the disruption. Though Green is known for his dramatic antics, this was part of a well-established tradition.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference.

In 2017, Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, positioning them to fulfill their 2010 promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. The proposed American Health Care Act aimed to modify key aspects of the law while preserving others, but it ultimately failed in the Senate.

The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama, barred insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher premiums. While intended to protect vulnerable patients, the policy led to higher premiums for everyone, including those already struggling to afford health care.

Republicans proposed a different solution: letting the states place people with pre-existing conditions into “high-risk pools,” allowing insurers to charge them high premiums, and providing government subsidies to offset those costs. The chronically ill could access the care they needed without driving up costs for everyone.

More doom, more gloom

This all sounds fairly tame and technocratic, but if you watched Democrats’ campaign ads leading up to the 2018 midterms, you’d get the impression that Donald Trump and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) had personally executed every cancer-ridden grandma in the country. About half of the party’s ads that cycle focused on health care, especially the issue of pre-existing conditions.

And it worked. Democrats picked up 41 seats, ending Trump’s trifecta.

In 2022, Democrats were polling badly in the lead-up to that year’s midterms. Joe Biden was unpopular, the Afghanistan withdrawal had become a national embarrassment, and inflation was out of control. Right on cue, health care hysteria commenced.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) laid out an 11-point plan for that election cycle, which included a proposal that — in his words — “all federal legislation should sunset in five years” unless Congress repassed it. While this proposal probably wouldn’t have had much effect other than creating more work for Congress, Democrats saw their chance and pounced.

Then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) claimed Scott’s proposal would “end Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.” The Democratic National Committee flooded the airwaves with the same alarmism.

That November, Democrats managed to hold down their losses in the House and even expanded their Senate majority. While it would be an overstatement to attribute their strong performance to health care alarmism alone, it certainly didn’t hurt.

History repeating?

Today, the Democrats find themselves in a similarly precarious situation. Republicans, once again, have a trifecta, and Trump is basking in the best approval ratings of his political career. Democrats have so far failed to marshal an effective resistance or even settle on a cohesive message — so they’re breaking out the old playbook.

Green’s theatrics about proposed Medicaid cuts attracted plenty of attention, but his fellow Democrats are starting to parrot the same talking points. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) recently warned that House Republicans’ plan “could take health care away from up to 25 million Americans.”

In reality, this is just more fearmongering. Advocates of socialized medicine like Wendell Potter, who quit his job as a Cigna executive to shill for single-payer health care, insist that expanding Medicaid is simply “the right thing to do.” Even though ironically, he also explained elsewhere how insurers turn Medicaid into their own personal piggy bank.

Sticking millions of more people on Medicaid — including illegal immigrants, if some Democrats have their way — hurts the very people it’s designed to help. Since Obama raised the eligibility threshold to 138% of the poverty line, the result has been overcrowding, provider shortages, and massive cost overruns.

It would be very convenient if lawmakers could fix American health care by throwing more money at it, but that’s simply not the case. Comprehensive reforms are needed to tackle systemic issues of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference. Otherwise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will ride a blue wave of health care alarmism straight to the speaker’s chair in 2026.

GOP’s budget strategy: Delay, deflect, do nothing



Republican leaders have repeatedly promised to “fight the next time” — a vow they’ve made and broken since the Tea Party era, even when they controlled all three branches of government.

Despite holding leverage at the start of each Congress, Republicans — including Donald Trump — have shown a persistent fear of government shutdowns. They begin with numerous opportunities to push their campaign promises by attaching them to must-pass appropriation bills, debt ceiling increases, and reauthorization measures. Yet as deadlines approach, they repeatedly cave, funding left-wing priorities while assuring their base that they’ll stand firm in the next round. This pattern has played out consistently since 2011.

Executive actions seem to be the only option left for cutting spending.

As a result, every major budget bill passed during recent GOP trifectas has relied more on Democratic support than Republican. Now, despite a historic mandate, it appears that Republicans are poised to repeat the cycle yet again. Even the Freedom Caucus seems ready to fall in line, following Trump’s directive of “no dissent.”

After the Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling requiring Trump to continue some USAID funding, the Freedom Caucus declared it would oppose any bill that fails to codify DOGE cuts. Recognizing that the courts would likely overturn any significant executive cuts, the House Freedom Caucus and nine GOP senators released a letter stating, “No DOGE, no deal.”

Minutes later, Trump announced his support for a continuing resolution to fund the government for the next six months at the same level as Biden’s budget — a level Republicans had previously condemned as a driver of inflation.

Instead of pressuring lukewarm Republicans, Trump silenced the Freedom Caucus in a way no one else could. Now, the caucus is defending the delay on spending cuts, claiming it gives the DOGE time to identify savings. But even if significant savings could be found outside the military, veterans’ benefits, and entitlements — it cannot — the courts have made it clear that they will not allow broad spending cuts enacted solely through the executive branch.

Republicans added more than $200 billion to Biden’s budget levels in December, claiming it was a temporary move until March, when Trump could influence the fiscal year 2025 budget. Yet here we are, still funding Biden’s spending levels and policies, with Republicans promising that “next time” will be the real fight.

Why will next time be different?

But it won’t be. The same fear of a government shutdown persists and will likely intensify during a recession. Either Republicans are willing to risk a shutdown for spending cuts, or they’re not. Either Trump understands that he has a louder megaphone than Democrats to make the case for cuts, or he doesn’t.

As history shows, leverage doesn’t increase the farther we get from an election — it diminishes. Without exception.

We can’t repeat the mistakes of Trump’s last term, when good executive policies didn’t last because Trump himself blocked conservatives from codifying them in the budget. The pattern of delaying spending cuts was exhausting. From April 2017 to March 2018, we heard promises of “next time” — only for Trump to sign an omnibus bill that increased spending on everything he had vowed to cut, followed by another round of the same the next fiscal year after he said “never again.” Every must-pass bill during that period passed with more Democratic votes than Republican ones.

Not like a spending freeze

Republicans’ plan to erase the automatic 1% spending cuts is a blatant betrayal. These cuts would have taken effect automatically if Congress did nothing. Back in June 2023, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) handed Joe Biden a clean debt limit suspension, leading to $4.8 trillion in new debt in just 18 months — without a recession or a war. The one upside of that deal was a provision that would trigger a 1% across-the-board spending cut if Congress failed to pass all 12 appropriations bills by the start of the next calendar year.

So what happened to that agreement?

After backfilling those cuts in a deal last year, House Republicans now argue that Section 102 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 only triggers the 1% cuts if they fail to fund the government for the rest of the year. Even though they’re pushing a continuing resolution instead of a full appropriations bill, they claim that as long as the CR funds the government through year’s end, the sequestration won’t apply.

Johnson’s betrayal last year was bad enough, but this year’s maneuver is even worse. Their excuse — fear of defense cuts — no longer holds water, since they plan to backfill more mandatory defense spending through budget reconciliation.

The reality is clear: This isn’t about timing or hoping for a better budget fight later in the year. Not with their political capital waning and the economy possibly entering a recession. Republicans have no intention of using their control to pass meaningful spending cuts in a budget bill. Period.

Time for a showdown

Executive actions seem to be the only option left for cutting spending. Defenders of the status quo dismiss concerns by suggesting that Trump will refuse to spend excess funds and will impound undesirable accounts and programs. The problem is clear: Courts have already ordered him to spend $2 billion in USAID funding. It’s unrealistic to expect the courts to support defunding entire agencies or devolving the Department of Education to the states, especially after Congress re-funds them in response to Trump’s initial signals.

This leads us to the last tool: a rescissions package. Under the Budget Control Act of 1974, the president can propose a list of expenditures to rescind, triggering a privileged motion in Congress that can pass without a filibuster. The catch? When rescissions are separate from “must-pass” bills, many weak-kneed Republicans will vote them down, even without Democratic help. Even USAID, a seemingly obvious target for cuts, has several defenders in Congress, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). In fact, RINOs blocked a rescissions package from Trump in 2019.

The only way for rescissions to work is for Trump to apply pressure. He must publicly confront the RINOs with the same intensity he reserves for Freedom Caucus members who dissent from the right. The problem is that Trump has never shown a willingness to confront those who oppose him from the left.

Maybe he will — next time.

Why A Continuing Resolution Is The Best Way To Propel Trump’s Agenda Right Now

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Is the US government really spending $400 million on Cybertrucks?



Rumors are swirling that the feds are buying $400 million worth of Tesla Cybertrucks.

That would be a huge conflict of interest, considering that Tesla chief Elon Musk is heading up the Department of Government Efficiency in its campaign to curb out-of-control government spending.

But is it true?

Not according to Musk. “I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least,” Musk posted on X last week.

Some clarification is in order. Yes, some state officials will be driving around in special armored versions of the stainless steel pickup. The U.S. State Department has budgeted for new “Armored Electric Vehicles” over the next five years.

But it's important to note that this budget was first drafted under the Biden administration in December of last year. Then it specifically included “Armored Teslas” as one of its line items. Also included were armored sedans and armored BMW X5 and X7s. A December State Department procurement list also included $400 million in Cybertrucks.

Under Trump, the State Department has changed all of those to the more generic “Armored Electric Vehicles.” The program has a target for delivery through the next five years.

These were first listed under the code for "miscellaneous food manufacturing." That's since been updated with the code for "armored car services."

That could be a simple clerical error. But a bigger question remains. No matter who makes these vehicles, why does the State Department need $400 million worth?

The State Department buys all types of armored trucks and gas vehicles annually. My guess is that this is a tempest in a teapot and that much of this government purchase will be canceled.

We'll be watching if something comes of this story.

Trump’s spending war begins, but the swamp won’t go quietly



The Department of Government Efficiency launched aggressive efforts to rein in federal bureaucracy. But limited-government conservatives should not assume fiscal responsibility is within reach.

The reality of America’s financial situation remains dire. In fiscal 2024, the federal government spent $6.8 trillion but collected only $4.9 trillion in taxes. That left a deficit of $1.9 trillion, pushing the national debt to $35.5 trillion by year’s end.

How did our constitutional republic end up in this mess?

To balance the budget, the DOGE must eliminate nearly $2 trillion in annual spending. Until then, the national debt will continue to rise.

So far, the Trump administration’s crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse has saved about $100 billion. But that’s a fraction of what’s needed, and the challenge ahead remains enormous.

The executive orders and DOGE actions are weak by nature and not built to last. Without legislative backing, they can be reversed by the next administration. Meanwhile, entrenched bureaucrats will resist implementation, requiring strict enforcement from the administration.

Legal challenges are already moving through the courts, and civil service regulations will be used to slow progress. The left-leaning media, still reeling from Trump’s early moves, is preparing for a full-scale counteroffensive of disinformation and manufactured outrage. As temperatures rise across the country, expect the media’s rhetoric to heat up, fueling protests that will likely lead to violence and destruction.

When that happens, Republican legislators will waver, as they always do. As spending battles unfold — through continuing resolutions, omnibus bills, debt-ceiling fights, or an elusive budget proposal — uniparty politicians will band together to protect the bureaucratic status quo.

They will do so for three reasons. First, many are entrenched in the system and benefit from it — they’re swamp-dwellers. Second, Republicans hold only a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress, and those facing re-election in battleground districts will avoid controversial legislation. Third, Democrats could retake the House or Senate in the midterms, eliminating any appetite for shrinking the federal bureaucracy.

Even if lawmakers find the will to act, another major obstacle remains: entitlement spending. Congress has already approved massive and popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. As more Baby Boomers retire, these programs will automatically cost more. Social Security has been paying out more than it collects in taxes since 2010, depleting its trust fund. Worse, the federal government borrowed $1.7 trillion from that trust fund to cover other expenses. This means the DOGE must not only cut $2 trillion annually to balance the budget but also figure out how to repay that $1.7 trillion while continuing to fund retiree benefits.

A larger crisis looms. The federal government spent $900 billion on interest payments in fiscal year 2024, making it the second-largest budget item after Social Security. As the national debt grows and interest rates rise, interest payments will soon surpass Social Security costs. With a $40 trillion debt and 5% interest rates, annual interest payments could hit $2 trillion — another financial mountain for the DOGE to climb.

How did our constitutional republic end up in this mess?

The problem lies in the legislative branch’s unchecked ability to expand the bureaucracy and increase spending. The only real restraint is the willingness of voters to hold lawmakers accountable at the ballot box. But that never happens. Power shifts between parties, yet the federal government keeps growing, no matter who is in charge.

At some point, the American people must summon the political will to amend the Constitution and impose limits on the legislature. Potential safeguards include capping government spending (for example, limiting current-year spending to 10% of the prior year’s GDP), imposing term limits to reduce the influence of lobbyists, requiring single-issue bills to prevent pork-barrel spending, granting the president a line-item veto, and mandating a balanced budget.

America’s founders miscalculated. They never envisioned that a nation that fought a revolution against government overreach would allow another oppressive system to take its place. They could not have imagined that a country built by rugged individualists — who produced the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — would become a society captivated by collectivist ideologies.

The DOGE’s initial efforts are a promising start, but they are not enough. The fight for fiscal sanity will span multiple administrations and possibly generations. Limited-government conservatives must prepare for a long battle. The DOGE is just the first step on a much longer journey.