House Republicans celebrated the White House sending the first legislative package seeking to codify $9.4 billion in Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts to Congress on Tuesday.
The legislation, known as a “rescissions package,” will be sponsored by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and is expected to receive a floor vote next week, according to a House GOP leadership statement issued Tuesday evening. House Republicans characterized the package as the next step in the conference’s efforts to cut spending after identifying more than $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over a decade in the House-passed “big, beautiful” bill.
“There was a lot of us that wish there would be sharper, more current spending cuts [in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill], and so following up with that on this [DOGE cuts] keeps the promises that we made to our voters that we are going to cut spending,” Republican Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told the DCNF. “With this rescissions package coming right after, I think it is a smart move, and do it quickly and let these travel together.”
The rescissions package includes $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an entity which provides funding to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The legislation also proposes a claw back of $8.3 billion in foreign aid spending, including United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs.
Though the $9.4 billion falls short of the $175 billion DOGE’s former head Elon Musk claims to have identified during his tenure leading the president’s cost-cutting department, House Republicans have cast the current rescissions package as the first of many they hope to pass.
“We have to begin to find savings for the American people, just even a small first step forward in that,” Republican Texas Rep. Michael Cloud, an HFC member, told the DCNF. “This should be an easy vote for Republicans.”
Given House Republicans’ 220-213 majority, Speaker Mike Johnson can spare just three GOP votes assuming all members are present and House Democrats oppose the measure. House and Senate Republicans will be able to circumvent Democratic opposition by passing the rescissions package through simple majority votes.
Republican Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Republican who frequently breaks with his party and the president, told Semafor that clawing back money appropriated for an anti-HIV program known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would be the “red line” for him.
The rescissions package notably includes nearly $10 million in PEPFAR cuts, including $3 million for “circumcision, vasectomies and condoms” in Zambia” and nearly $1 million in cuts for services for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal, according to a breakdown of the rescissions package obtained by the DCNF.
Conservative House Republicans have characterized the rescissions package as a test to show if GOP lawmakers’ rhetoric about slashing spending aligns with their actions.
“We’ll see if Congress can step up to the plate,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy said Tuesday. “If Congress can’t deal with NPR, PBS and a list of crazy expenditures overseas, then they’re not going to rescind.”
“You can’t send anything to me that I’m not going to vote to rescind,” Roy added. “So fire away.”
Greene told reporters Tuesday that House Republicans should be voting on DOGE cuts every week.
“Anytime we can cut foreign aid, I can tell you right now, we can’t cut enough foreign aid, and I think that’s what Americans want to see,” Greene said. “If Republicans can’t find the political will to vote for a $9 billion package, I think Republicans are going to be in trouble because the American people are very adamant about these DOGE cuts.”
Though no spending identified by DOGE has been returned to the U.S. Treasury thus far, House Republicans interviewed by the DCNF argued the president’s cost-cutting efforts have been a success.
“We finally have a mechanism to really identify much of the waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and even corruption,” Cloud said. “Not only should we be able to transfer that knowledge into savings to the American people, they should be looking at prosecutions for how some of it was mismanaged.”
“He [Musk] came in and put in a process that will continue to work beyond him,” Cloud said. “There’s a number of agencies that haven’t necessarily gotten their audit yet.”
Stutzman said DOGE still needs to root out waste in the Pentagon and upgrade the government’s payment systems.
“The IRS is still sending out refund checks‚ not even doing an ACH,” Stutzman noted, referring to the electronic system that allows for the transfer of money between bank accounts without using check payments. “Talk about ripe for fraud.”
“We’ve got to get serious about this [slashing spending] as Republicans,” Cloud said. “We said this was the moment, a once in a generation, historic moment to correct course in our nation … we’ve got to do what we said we were going to do for the American people.”
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