The White House plans to send a small package of spending cuts to Congress next week, senior GOP officials told several House Republicans Wednesday.
The planned transmission of the “rescissions” bill, confirmed by two Republicans granted anonymity to describe the plans, comes after a long internal battle over how to formalize the cuts that have been made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.
The package set to land on Capitol Hill is expected to reflect only a fraction of the DOGE cuts, which have already fallen far short of Musk’s multi-trillion-dollar aspirations. The two Republicans said it will target NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid agencies that have already been gutted by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Speaker Mike Johnson said on X Wednesday that the House “is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand.” He said the House “will act quickly” on a package without saying when it might be submitted or what it might contain.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have been growing impatient as they await the White House request, after the Trump administration confirmed more than six weeks ago that it intended to send a more than $9 billion package of proposed cutbacks.
It’s unclear whether the forthcoming submission will meet that target, which is itself a tiny fraction of the $1.6 trillion in yearly discretionary spending. The White House budget office did not respond to a request for comment.
“We’ve all said that we’re anxious to act on rescissions packages and hope they find a way to send them up,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a brief interview last week before lawmakers left town for a weeklong recess.
An online pressure campaign aimed at “codifying” the DOGE cuts has gained steam in recent days, pushed by Musk-friendly Republicans including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Many MAGA influencers on Musk’s X platform have amplified the effort.
In a CBS News interview Tuesday, Musk himself criticized the “one big, beautiful bill” backed by Trump that just narrowly cleared the House last week and is headed for the Senate. Musk said he “was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” “A bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk said in a clip of the interview published Tuesday night. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”
Trump’s top policy aide, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, responded to Musk in a late-night X post noting that the cuts Musk has been seeking could not be done in the GOP megabill but instead “would have to be done through what is known as a rescissions package or an appropriations bill.”
Senior Republicans informed some House GOP members the rescissions package would finally be coming hours later.
Whether it can pass is a separate question: Republicans have debated possible DOGE-inspired rescissions for months, and GOP leaders have been sensitive to the fact that some pieces may have trouble passing the House, according to two other Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the matter, as well as the tight 45-day timeline for consideration set out in federal law. Top appropriators have sought to weigh in ahead of any White House submission to ensure the package can pass.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who first pressed Musk almost three months ago to get Trump to pursue clawbacks, is frustrated that the Trump administration had not sent a package sooner.
“I’m very disappointed — not only in the White House, but disappointed in Congress,” Paul said in a brief interview last week. “If Congress can’t cut $9 billion, I think most of them should resign and go home.”