Senior Republicans are seriously exploring how to include cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in an upcoming government funding bill — a move that would skyrocket tensions with Democrats and drastically raise the potential for a government shutdown.
Top GOP leaders and President Donald Trump’s team have been discussing the idea, which is far from finalized, according to three people who were granted anonymity to discuss the conversations.
But one of the people said the idea would be to codify some of the “most egregious” examples of alleged waste that DOGE has identified and incorporate them into a government funding patch through the end of the fiscal year. Republicans would then dare Democrats to vote against the package, lest they be blamed for causing a shutdown come the March 14 deadline.
The strategy, if adopted, could help satisfy conservative hard-liners who are already upset Congress is hurtling toward another short-term spending patch. But it would scramble the politics of the looming shutdown fight considerably, alienating Democrats whose votes are needed to ensure passage given the narrow Republican majorities in both chambers.
Republicans were initially discussing moving ahead with a so-called clean continuing resolution, or CR, that would not include politically toxic policy riders. That would have put pressure on Democrats to fall in line, even as Republicans have ruled out adhering to Democratic demands that any funding bill include language to prevent Trump and Musk from overriding congressional spending decisions.
But codifying DOGE actions would be a nonstarter for Democrats, who are already feeling pressure from liberal voters to put up a fight. A vote for DOGE cuts of any sort would effectively be interpreted as an endorsement of what they have been calling an unconstitutional power grab.
Still, some senior Republicans see merit in the tentative plan: They believe if Trump presses Republicans to back the effort, they would get their own members to come on board and would only need to rely on a few Democratic votes to make up for any shortfall on the GOP side. Other top Republicans, however, are privately skeptical, scratching their heads at how they’d convince the necessary seven Democrats in the Senate to come along.
Notably, the idea was greeted with skepticism by key GOP senators Thursday. “I don’t see how that could work,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine. Two other Republican appropriators expressed similar confusion.
The fact that Republicans are even considering such a play shows how bullish they are that the politics of cutting down the federal workforce — while messy and chaotic — skew in their favor.
The strategy would also be responsive to demands Speaker Mike Johnson is facing from his right flank to slash government spending in the funding bill. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), said he got assurances from GOP leaders that cuts would be made to discretionary spending as part of his agreement to vote for the House GOP budget plan earlier this week.
The speaker, asked about his specific assurances to Davidson as he left the House floor Thursday, told reporters, “Stay tuned.”
Johnson also suggested it could make sense to codify in the spending bill some of the Trump administration’s unilateral funding freezes, including for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been effectively dismantled by DOGE.
“It would not make sense to appropriate funds to divisions of an agency that doesn’t exist anymore, right?” Johnson said. But the speaker also said he wanted to pursue a funding patch that’s as “clean as possible,” suggesting the idea to incorporate DOGE cuts might not survive.
Some Republicans believe party leaders could put this idea forward to make a point, then later move to a “clean” CR without the pro-DOGE provision.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
