DOGE AMBITIONS COME INTO FOCUS Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s to-do list is getting long. The two newly crowned government reformers laid out their ambitions for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency this week during their trip to Capitol Hill — and listened to a long list of budget-cutting requests from GOP lawmakers. Republican members say it’s too early to lay claim to top priorities or slam dunk cost-cutting moves. But a DOGE framework started to take shape this week as lawmakers made their pitches. Here are eight ideas and requests Musk, Ramaswamy and congressional Republicans are mulling: Rescission: Lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) want DOGE to help Republicans try to use rescission again to delete federal funding. It’s a tool presidents can use to request that Congress take back appropriated funds that haven’t yet been spent. The concept is nothing new for Trump’s team. In 2018, the White House sent Congress a plan for nixing $15 billion in already appropriated funding, including billions of dollars from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Despite the fact that recissions can bypass a filibuster and pass with a simple majority in the Senate, the GOP-controlled chamber rejected the effort. Deleting regulations: Several Republicans told Musk and Ramaswamy they want the White House to harness the Congressional Review Act to nix rules the Biden administration created. Just like rescission of funding, that regulation-cutting action would start with the White House and end with Congress, again with special power to skirt the Senate filibuster. “I think the Trump administration should rewrite a lot of regulations, send them back over, and then we'd have another chance at cutting regulations that they put forward — modifications of old regulations,” Paul told us. Permitting reform: Musk and Ramaswamy discussed permitting reform on Thursday, focusing on the need to ease approval for infrastructure and energy projects, according to GOP lawmakers in meetings with the two DOGE leaders on Thursday. Members have tried for more than a year to reach a bipartisan deal on permitting reform, and senior Republican appropriator Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho said Musk and Ramaswamy acknowledged any lasting change to federal permitting will require congressional action. Scrapping tax credits: After Musk left his first meeting on Capitol Hill this week, he was asked if he’d like to nix tax credits for electric vehicles. “I think we get rid of all credits,” he replied. Return to office: Republicans have been talking about this for years. But they hope DOGE can breathe new life into a crackdown on work-from-home policies for federal workers. “One thing I think we would all agree on is it is time for federal employees to get back to work at their work sites, wherever that may be, five days a week,” incoming Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said. How would this cut spending? Republicans expect federal workers to resign rather than return to the office, slashing payrolls if those vacancies are left unfilled. Tech modernization: It’s no surprise that there’s already consensus growing between GOP lawmakers and DOGE leaders that bringing the federal government’s technology into the 21st century (and maybe even this decade) could reap major efficiencies. “That's an area where, clearly, the federal government lags behind the private sector, and it's one area where the private sector has been able to find some pretty substantial efficiencies,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said Thursday. Impoundment: There is a long (and growing) list of items Republican lawmakers would like to see Trump defund using impoundment power to hold back money Congress approved for a specific purpose. Democrats, for their part, are ready to raise constitutional challenges to those actions. At Thursday’s meeting with House Republicans, lawmakers made suggestions for accounts to cut using impoundment. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) raised doubts after the meeting that they’d be able to kill whole agencies with that tool, but said he thinks programs could be targeted. Mandatory cuts: Even deep cuts to the $1.7 trillion Congress appropriates each year to fund federal agencies won’t come close to DOGE’s stated goals of slashing $2 trillion. That means DOGE and lawmakers would have to look into the $3.8 trillion a year in spending on “mandatory” programs like Medicare, Social Security, food stamps and Medicaid. — Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes, with an assist from Andres Picon GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Friday, Dec. 6, where the holiday season is testing our personal budgets and we are considering a mini-DOGE intervention.
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