As Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy make sweeping promises to cut $2 trillion dollars of federal spending, senior House Republicans have raised concerns with GOP leadership that efforts to cut wasteful federal spending will put the party on a collision course.
Senior House Republicans, including some who serve on the committee responsible for appropriating money, have raised concerns, over how to put in practice conflicting parameters being set at the direction of President-elect Donald Trump now that the excitement around the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency has begun to settle.
Even though Republicans want to take big swings to carry out Trump’s cost-cutting mandate, they have found themselves in a paradox that can be distilled down to a math problem with political landmines attached to it. And they don’t have a lot of time to solve it since Musk and Ramaswamy want to wrap up their work by 2026.
All of the government’s discretionary spending, which amounts to 30% of the federal budget and includes defense spending that Republicans do not want to cut, doesn’t hit the $2 trillion price tag Musk and Ramaswamy have set. That means they would need to look at mandatory spending, which includes popular safety net programs such as Social Security that even Trump has said will not be touched. On top of that, Republicans want to spend more money to implement Trump’s strict border measures, fulfill Trump’s mass deportation campaign promise and continue to support Israel in its ongoing war in the Middle East.
Colombian asylum seekers walk along a desert road after crossing the US-Mexico on September 22, 2024 near Jacumba Hot Springs, California. – John Moore/Getty Images
“This is not a private company. If it were, it would be a lot easier,” one senior GOP lawmaker told CNN, who laid out the conflicting factors. “What I’m hearing is good, aspirational stuff, but the stuff that they’re talking about, the specifics: they’re tiny, low hanging fruit.”
Despite their concerns about the roadblocks ahead, GOP lawmakers have made the case directly to Musk and Ramaswamy that they have to work with Congress, not around them, multiple sources told CNN, even as Trump is showing signs that he wants to test the waters of making spending decisions unilaterally by reinstating the team who unsuccessfully helped him try to do so the first time.
Even Musk has privately conceded to lawmakers that some of his ideas so far haven’t been very popular or won’t succeed, multiple sources told CNN, but emphasized that he wants the process to be collaborative. One such proposal that is percolating, according to two sources, is to cut all federal workers who were hired in the last year. That is getting some fierce pushback internally, but many cautioned it is still too early to criticize the ideas.
“They have been really thoughtful and deliberate about sitting down with key stakeholders. But they are in information-gathering mode,” GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota told CNN. “One of the key rules of brainstorming is don’t criticize the ideas during brainstorming.”
Republicans have raised the prospect of using reconciliation, a process to fast-track agenda items by allowing lawmakers to bypass the 60-vote threshold typically required to move legislation in the Senate, to enact some of the regulatory cuts, administrative reductions and cost-saving measures being proposed. But it’s a messy process that Republicans are already disagreeing over how to use.
Lawmakers have also warned the DOGE leaders that Trump’s White House lawyers need to be ready to deal with expected lawsuits for any cuts they try to make outside of Congress, such as through executive orders, two sources told CNN. Musk and Ramaswamy have already consulted lawyers as well as private sector volunteers as they begin scrutinizing government programs, one of the sources added.
The complicated reality has created a discomfort.
“I wish them all the best, and I mean that sincerely, but then you got to figure out how to build the bridge to actually make it happen in government, since right now, while ‘doggie’ is a great concept, there is a lot of people asking correctly, so how am I going to do that?” GOP Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, told CNN.
Elon Musk, right, carries his son on his shoulders at the US Capitol following a meeting with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, left, Rep. Kat Cammack, center, and other members of the US Congress on December 5, in Washington, DC. – Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
On the heels of Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s flashy visit to Capitol Hill last week to preview their new effort, a bipartisan group of lawmakers headed to a prestigious forum with senior members of the defense community and were met with concerns that deep cuts could impact military capability.
“We were talking about that this weekend,” GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who was at the Reagan National Defense Forum, said. “We just want to make sure it doesn’t cut combat capability. If you can show me waste, I’m all for cutting it.”
Even GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is leading the Oversight subcommittee working with DOGE and spent the weekend meeting with Trump and his team, said that people are approaching the difficult cuts needed to be made in a practical way.
“Everyone is realistic,” Greene told CNN. “It’s always tough in the beginning, and then once you get through it, everything is bigger and stronger.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who is in regular contact with Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy, told CNN, “There’s just so much potential.”
Fog hovers over the dome of the U.S. Capitol on December 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. – Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
The tug of war over who has control over spending kicks off
Meanwhile, Trump is showing signs that he is laying the groundwork to test the waters of going around Congress to enact these cuts, a reality that GOP lawmakers seem unwilling to face.
His nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which would turn DOGE’s proposals into a reality, is a prominent believer that Trump can decline to spend money that Congress appropriates, a process called impoundments. Russell Vought, co-author of Project 2025, has called impoundments “a necessary remedy to our fiscal brokeness.”
Trump’s pick to be OMB’s general counsel, Mark Paoletta, has even written about the constitutional case for impoundments.
Musk and Ramaswamy have also written an op-ed in support of impoundments.
In his first term as president, Trump tried to go around Congress by withholding funds to Ukraine as he pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky to help engineer an investigation into Joe Biden. That pressure led to Trump’s first impeachment by Democrats in Congress. The funds were ultimately released, and the Government Accountability Office argued that the Trump administration broke the law by withholding the aid.
Yet lawmakers, many of whom are still educating themselves on the laws surrounding impoundments, don’t think Trump will go there.
“We worked very hard to stay in the majority and get the majority in Congress. I’m sure that the ‘thank you’ for that is not, ‘we don’t need no stinking Congress,’” Amodei told CNN.
GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, who claimed that all stakeholders involved want the same thing echoed, “They have no choice but to work with us, they have to.”
And GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the incoming Senate Appropriations chairwoman for the next Congress, told CNN ahead of her one-on-one meeting with Musk, “To me, that violates the separation of powers.”
Still, Collins said Thursday she was “impressed” by Musk after her meeting with him last week.
“As far as the new effort on government efficiency – I can never remember how it’s pronounced, I will admit – I had an excellent 70-minute meeting with Elon Musk,” Collins said during an interview at the bipartisan “No Labels” conference in Washington.
The new bipartisan caucus supporting DOGE, led by GOP Reps. Aaron Bean of Florida and Pete Sessions of Texas, have pledged to work with Musk and Ramaswamy and say their work is just getting started after last week’s listening sessions. The caucus is working to hold its first official meeting next week.
But the pressure is mounting to act, even if the next steps are unclear.
“It is incumbent upon Republicans for us to advance the ball, to shrink the size of government, actually shrink the size of government,” GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said on the floor on Tuesday. “Don’t hide behind DOGE. Don’t hide behind Elon. Don’t hide behind Vivek.”
CNN’s David Wright and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
