Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he plans to use the cuts undertaken by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative as he tries to get Republican fiscal hawks on board with a budget blueprint paving the way for a massive party-line tax, border and energy bill.
The strategy, confirmed in a brief interview Tuesday, comes as Senate GOP leaders face a growing challenge in convincing a handful of conservatives members who want to go beyond the $2 trillion in cuts contained in the House budget framework.
“In the end, a lot of our folks who want to see a more aggressive approach to that realize that there are political considerations, and it’s all [about] what you can get the votes for,” Thune said.
Thune said that in addition to the massive domestic policy bill, “hopefully we’ll get other opportunities to” cut spending, naming DOGE as one of “a lot of good opportunities to get our country on a more sustainable fiscal path.“
Asked if the DOGE cuts could help sell a deal to conservatives, Thune said, “Anything that complements efforts to demonstrate that we are making serious headway in reducing spending and getting the deficit and debt under control is going to be progress. So however we get there, we want to get there.”
Senate Republicans haven’t aligned internally — much less with the House — on how deeply they want to cut spending. Even as Thune deals with demands from his right for more sweeping cuts, he’s got concerns in other corners of his conference that the House blueprint would require politically unpopular cuts to Medicaid.
The DOGE cuts aren’t expected to be a part of the final party-line megabill. But GOP senators, including Thune allies, have previously suggested that they could be included in the overall accounting showing fiscal hawks that Republicans won’t be adding to federal budget deficits.
Many Senate Republicans are pushing President Donald Trump to send them a so-called “rescissions” package — one that would allow Congress to vote on codifying Musk’s work.
While some Republicans doubt Trump will do so while his administration fights to defend DOGE’s work in court, Trump himself told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he supported the idea of rescissions: “That would be great. I think we’re going to do that,” he said.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.