Elon Musk, the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, asked Senate Republicans to codify the cuts that he and his cohorts are making to the federal bureaucracy.
Senators who attended the Wednesday lunch meeting with Mr. Musk said they are on board with that plan and suggested using the rescissions process to do so, because it only requires 51 votes in the Senate as opposed to the 60 it takes to pass most spending bills.
Mr. Musk is also meeting with House Republicans as he seeks to partner with lawmakers to codify the DOGE savings and to assuage any of their concerns about the government downsizing and cost-cutting.
“There’s a political element to this we’re missing. We need to capture this in a legislative process to make it real,” said Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, suggesting “it’s time for the White House now to go on offense.”
He said Mr. Musk was “so happy” to learn that the rescission process is a tool available to lock in the DOGE cuts with only Republican votes that the billionaire did his signature two-fist pump and said, “Let’s use it.”
Rescissions are available under a budget law known as the Impoundment Control Act that allows the president to submit to Congress a list of unspent funding he would like to claw back from what lawmakers previously appropriated.
The proposed rescissions are subject to expedited procedures for consideration in the House and the Senate, including an exemption from the Senate filibuster that will allow Republicans to pass the cuts with a simple majority if they’re mostly united.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, who has for weeks been asking the White House to submit a rescissions package to Congress to codify the DOGE cuts, first brought up the idea in the meeting with Mr. Musk.
“I love all the stuff they’re doing, but we got to vote on it,” he said.
Mr. Paul cited the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling from earlier Wednesday that a federal judge can order the administration to pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance money the White House had put on pause through the impoundment process.
The Impoundment Control Act provides limits on funds a president can block from being spent through impoundment without a vote from Congress and provides rescissions as a path to requesting such a vote. Mr. Trump and his budget director Russ Vought both believe the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.
“We had a ruling this morning from the Supreme Court that seems to be pushing towards that there needs to be rescission, that they’re not going to be able to [use] impoundment,” Mr. Paul said.
Before the ruling, Mr. Paul said Trump administration officials resisted his suggestion to use rescissions, saying they planned to challenge the impoundment law in court to test the limits of the president’s power.
The senator said a realization is hopefully starting to set in at the White House that Congress needs to codify the DOGE cuts through rescissions — the easiest path — or the regular appropriations process.
“Yes, Congress is feckless. Yes, Congress is terrible with spending. But we’ve got to see what we can do to try to rally troops,” Mr. Paul said. “And the president, who is very popular, could expend his energy to say, ‘I got $500 billion I found in waste. We’re going to cut it. But I need 51 of you, or 50 of you to vote for it.’”
He said a rescissions package would likely fall in the range of $100 billion to $500 billion.
Another benefit of using rescissions to codify DOGE cuts, Mr. Paul said, is it will help Republicans like him who have concerns about other aspects of Mr. Trump’s agenda adding to the debt to “be a little bit more open to it.”
Congressional Republicans are planning to pass the bulk of Mr. Trump’s agenda through the budget reconciliation process, which is also exempt from the Senate filibuster. But that process can only be used to adjust mandatory spending, while rescissions would allow for Republicans to cut discretionary spending.
Mr. Paul said Americans will be confused by DOGE saying it is slashing foreign aid and other discretionary spending only for Congress to renew that same level of funding through a stopgap funding bill lawmakers plan to pass before the March 14 deadline.
