Elon Musk’s time in government is over, Congress is poised to raise the debt ceiling by at least $4 trillion, and Republican fiscal hawks (and Musk himself) are understandably irritated about their progress in cutting the federal debt. This irritation, the changes in DOGE leadership, and the threat of hitting the debt limit in August or September have all combined to push the White House to propose codifying $9.3 billion in cuts to USAID, NPR, and PBS.
The process, in which the legislative and executive branches agree to recall spending Congress previously appropriated, is called rescission. And while most things in Congress are fairly complicated, this one is pretty simple. Here’s how it works.
Watch what Republicans do next. That will show you exactly how much their promises are worth.
First, the White House signals which funds it’s been given but didn’t use or doesn’t want to use and would like to return to the Treasury Department. That’s the proposal that’s reportedly heading to the lower chamber on Monday. Congress gave the president this power under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
Next, the House of Representatives considers the cuts, makes whatever tweaks and changes it wants to the proposal, and votes. If a simple majority says yes, it sends the rescission package to the Senate.
Then the Senate considers the proposal and can either pass it with a simple majority vote, thereby sending the rescissions to the president for his signature, or make its own alterations, in which case it goes back to the House of Representatives for another vote. As with just about everything, the two chambers must agree on the exact text before it can make the journey west to the White House.
Simple enough! After all, Republicans make cutting government a top campaign pledge in every single race, and even Democrats claim they want to make cuts to federal bloat when they’re on the campaign trail.
Of course, once they’re in D.C., Democrats don’t want to cut a dime, and few Republicans do either. So what happens next?
You can get a good preview by looking to the fairly recent history of Donald Trump’s rescissions. In 2018, first-term President Trump proposed $15.4 billion in rescissions of unused, unobligated funds sitting in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Land and Water Conservation Fund, and Department of Energy’s fuel-efficient vehicle loan fund.
The request passed the Republican-controlled House with little problem but stalled and was ultimately defeated in the Senate 48-50, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) voting no and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) absent, battling brain cancer.
The Republican senators who voted no saw the rescissions as attacks on programs they cared about. How could you be against children’s health!? The water?! None of them were swayed that the money was not needed and that the programs had been funded for the next year, so no child nor waterway was under threat.
They didn’t care at all. They couldn’t even bring themselves to cut the deficit by reclaiming unspent money. That was too much! This is what you’re up against in Washington – and from Republicans no less.
So who are the Republican senators to expect trouble from this time around, when the money is being clawed back from agencies and organizations that have been pushing a progressive, anti-American, and partisan Democratic agenda?
Susan Collins: Seven years after the failure of the 2018 rescissions package, Collins is the only no-vote Republican still in the U.S. Senate. She said her initial “no” was because she objected to the procedure being used at all — for anything. Money appropriated after careful negotiation by Congress should not be sent back, she reasoned, or senators will stop trusting the process. Oh no!
There’s no sign she’s changed her views on this, and she’s been a fairly regular no vote on the rest of Trump 47’s agenda thus far.
Lisa Murkowski: Back in 2018, the senior senator from Alaska pinched her nose and voted yes after some last-minute on-the-floor wrangling by then-Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others. While these cuts don’t hit anything specific to her constituents, don’t expect her to have softened her stance.
Mitch McConnell: While McConnell embraced rescissions as common sense in 2018, his cold relationship with the president has become openly antagonistic since the 2021 Capitol riot. More, foreign funding is dear to him — and he considers it his sacred duty to defend the Washington Blob’s foreign policy consensus against the president and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s America First agenda. While few will argue USAID spending wasn’t corrupt and wasteful, McConnell considers it an important tool of American statecraft. He’s a likely no with nothing to lose.
Thom Tillis: While longtime observers have noted Tillis’ penchant for clashing with the president, the North Carolina senator also considers himself a fiscal hawk, and his office has tweeted that he’s open to voting yes on rescissions — with Senate amendments.
Roger Wicker: The Mississippi senator doesn’t hide his frustration. He sees the rescission debate as a distraction from what he considers the Senate’s real work. He hasn’t ruled out supporting the measure, but if it were his call, the chamber wouldn’t waste time on this right now.
Any three Republican senators voting no would leave the decision to Vice President JD Vance, just as Mike Pence stood ready to break a tie in 2018. But four GOP defections would kill the measure outright. A loss would deal a humiliating blow to both the administration and the broader Republican Party.
Fiscal hawks now claim a mandate that voters never gave them. Trump won office promising mass deportations, a secure border, a smarter foreign policy, an end to the DEI and trans ideology push, and aggressive tariffs — not deep cuts to the Department of Education or a crusade against USAID. The administration’s sudden focus on those targets reflects the influence of Elon Musk and OMB Director Russ Vought, not the will of the voters.
But they’ve arrived. Their early shock-and-awe tactics grabbed the public’s attention, and the waste the DOGE uncovered has lit a fire — one that’s driving near-Tea Party intensity across Washington and social media. Voters are demanding more, and for good reason. Channeling that energy into codifying DOGE cuts through rescissions makes far more sense than sabotaging the president’s agenda over a reconciliation bill that doesn’t go far enough. This approach strengthens the republic. It deserves to continue.
Even if the effort only serves to placate budget hawks like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — senators still fuming over the debt ceiling hike — it’s a win.
Watch what Republicans do next. That will show you exactly how much their promises are worth.
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