Senate GOP Advances Tax Cuts, Border Security Spending After Marathon Session

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The Senate voted largely along party lines early Saturday morning to pass a budget blueprint encompassing many of President Donald Trump’s legislative priorities, including a permanent extension of the president’s 2017 tax cuts and $175 billion in new spending on border security.

Senators voted 51 to 48 to advance the Trump-backed budget resolution to the House for consideration with Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine joining with Senate Democrats to oppose the fiscal framework. The budget blueprint’s passage at roughly 2:30 a.m. came after a marathon series of votes known as a “vote-a-rama” during which Senate Democrats forced their Republican colleagues to take politically contentious votes on amendments related to entitlement program spending, Department of Government Efficiency actions and Trump’s tariffs.

Senate Republicans countered that the forthcoming tax and spending bill that would be unlocked with passage of the budget resolution by both chambers would not cut Americans’ Medicaid or Medicare benefits. Congressional Republicans are seeking to enact Trump’s legislative agenda through a process known as budget reconciliation, which allows Senate Republicans to bypass the filibuster and advance legislation by a simple majority vote.

“The argument is going to be made that we’re going to hurt all kinds of different people tonight in different ways,” Republican Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo said on the Senate floor Friday evening. “But the reality is that’s not going to happen. The President has been very clear any reforms to Medicare or Medicaid must not reduce patient benefits.”

No amendment offered by Senate Democrats was notably related to border security or helping fast-track the president’s deportation agenda.

Paul voted against the budget resolution, citing the blueprint’s inclusion of a $5 trillion increase in the statutory debt limit, which the Kentucky Republican argued would set a record for borrowing more money during one bill at any recent point in American history.

“If we expand the debt at $5 trillion that will be an expansion of the debt equal to or exceeding everything that happened in the Biden years,” Paul said on the Senate floor Friday. “Republicans who vote for this will be on record as being more fiscally liberal than their counterparts. They will vote to borrow more money than the Democrats have ever borrowed.”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget found that the Senate’s blueprint will add up to $5.8 trillion to the deficit, which the organization argued would be “historically unprecedented in its fiscal irresponsibility.”

Senate GOP leadership has argued that the low spending reduction floors in the bill give the upper chamber maximum flexibility to ensure compliance with the budget reconciliation process.

Some deficit-concerned House GOP lawmakers are not convinced senators are serious about cutting spending, suggesting they will oppose the budget resolution barring changes to the text.

“If the Senate can deliver real deficit reduction in line with or greater than the House goals, I can support the Senate budget resolution,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris said in a statement Saturday. “However, by the Senate setting committee instructions so low at $4 billion compared to the House’s $1.5 to $2 trillion, I am unconvinced that will happen. The Senate is free to put pen to paper to draft its reconciliation bill, but I can’t support House passage of the Senate changes to our budget resolution until I see the actual spending and deficit reduction plans to enact President Trump’s America First agenda.”

“The Senate response was unserious and disappointing, creating $5.8 trillion in new costs and a mere $4 billion in enforceable cuts, less than one day’s worth of borrowing by the federal government,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington said in a statement Saturday morning.

The initial House budget resolution did not allow for permanent tax relief, which is a nonstarter for most Senate Republicans and the president.

Senate Republicans included a permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in the fiscal framework by using a budget scoring approach that assumes a permanent extension has a deficit neutral impact because the forthcoming bill would just be continuing current policies.

“Americans should not have to live in fear of a tax hike every few years,” Thune said in a speech on the floor Thursday.

Arrington appeared to slam the budget resolution’s scoring approach Saturday morning for including the current-policy baseline without commensurate spending reductions.

“It also sets a dangerous precedent by direct scoring tax policy without including enforceable offsets,” Arrington said.

Trump has notably endorsed the Senate budget resolution, adding pressure on House lawmakers to support the blueprint when they return to Washington.

“Every Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “We need to pass it IMMEDIATELY!

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

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Senate Overnighter Sets the Stage for GOP to Clear ‘One, Big, Beautiful’ Hurdle

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When President Trump coined the phrase “one, big, beautiful bill” to describe his legislative strategy, there’s one word he left out: “complicated.” For House and Senate leaders, it’s been a two-month dance just to get on the same page about the broad strokes of a plan to implement Trump’s agenda. It’s like writing the rules for a game you haven’t even played yet. And this game, a “mega-MAGA” Twister of tax relief, debt limits, budget cuts, defense and border spending, offsets, baselines, and mind-numbing procedure, is winner-take-all.

Turns out, electing Trump was the easy part. Putting some of his biggest priorities into law is a different story. For weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) have been working around the clock, trying to juggle the party’s personalities with the White House’s non-negotiables — and somehow make it all squeeze through the Senate’s rigid rules and the House’s aggressive timeline.

So far, the two chambers have come to the table with very different perspectives on make-or-break items — from how much fat to cut from government to whether America can afford permanent tax cuts. Right now, the Senate’s main goal is to catch up to the House, which approved its framework three weeks ago. Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is doing his best to get his chamber there, finally publishing the text of a compromise bill on Wednesday.

In it, he gives senators a bit more wiggle room on how much spending to cut (the House insisted on a floor of $1.5-2 trillion), while also clearing the fiscal brush necessary to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent and raise the debt ceiling. “The Senate Plan has my Complete and Total Support,” the president posted when the language was released. “Every Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY. We need to pass it IMMEDIATELY!”

Of course, passing it “immediately” means enduring one of the truly entertaining traditions of the Senate (unless you’re a staffer): the vote-a-rama. One of the conditions of budget reconciliation — which is the path Republicans are choosing so they can enact Trump’s agenda with a simple majority — is that senators can offer an unlimited number of unrelated, off-topic amendments without worrying about filibusters. That usually means the minority takes the opportunity to make a political point or force the other party to cast a vote on an uncomfortable issue.

It also, veterans of the chamber will tell you, takes a lonnnnnng time. “It’s a total and unequivocal nightmare of epic proportions,” Jim Manley, a former spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, insisted with the drama of someone who’s suffered through it. “For those working in the Capitol, it is an extraordinarily stressful time. Normally cheerful individuals become snarling animals as more and more votes are taken,” he reflected. And what’s so frustrating, he said, is that “it’s largely a meaningless exercise.” “The amendments are BS. If they’re designed to do anything, they’re designed to craft 15-second digital attack ads.”

The members either pretend to hate it or actually do, but the stories that come out of vote-a-ramas are legendary. In a chamber that almost never works on Fridays, it’s the closest thing to a Senate sleepover there is. While the political all-nighters are painful for both parties, they always seem to produce funny anecdotes like back-room poker games, stealth happy hours, regional food wars, and coffee — lots of it. There are the iconic images — like former Senator Joe Manchin throwing pepperoni rolls at reporters in 2015 or the parade of mattresses wheeled in for sleepy senators in 2017.

Right now, the hazing is scheduled to begin Friday night and last until who-knows-when. Technically, it could go on until one party cries uncle and stops offering amendments. The most recent vote-a-rama, in February, lasted until 4:51 a.m,

Once the painful process is over, and the Senate finally passes its version of a plan, the cold hard reality is that it’s just the beginning. The House and Senate will have boarded the same train, but it won’t have left the station yet. “It’s a meaningful step,” Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) agreed, “but it’s a baby step, folks,” he said, tempering expectations. “It’s just a blueprint,” Kennedy said. “The real work starts after we do this.”

After a two-week Easter break, the really uncomfortable conversations begin: negotiating every single detail of the final reconciliation package and getting almost every Republican in both chambers to agree. Or, as congressional leadership might call it, torture. While the GOP might have hung together long enough to get a skeletal outline done, that’s nothing compared to sitting down and going through each and every number, arriving at one that satisfies 270 different people. Already, House members are planting flags in the ground about their “must-haves.”

As FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena González told The Washington Stand, “Since this budget resolution is designed to pass with only Republican votes, it’s illuminating different interests in the Republican Party. Defense hawks in both the House and Senate want the Senate’s higher ceiling on Pentagon spending ($150 billion vs. the House ceiling of $100 billion) to eventually prevail. President Trump wants his signature tax cuts from 2017 to be permanent and for Congress to raise the debt limit.”

Then, of course, there are the fiscal hawks, who González points out “are worried about the deficit and debt and generally favor the House language that ties a $4 trillion debt ceiling to at least $2 trillion in overall spending cuts — while at the same time, other Republicans are worried that a $4 trillion debt ceiling could be hit before next year’s election (triggering a second debt ceiling deadline that could force Republicans to compromise with Democrats on policy and spending right before an election) and therefore favor the Senate’s $5 trillion debt ceiling.”

And the clock is ticking. For Congress to hit Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline, House and Senate committees would only have until May 9 to produce their pieces of the budget package, Quena warns, and until May 16 for the Finance panel’s debt limit increase.

In other words, it’s a lot to sort through in a short amount of time. The one silver lining for the GOP is that Democrats, at this point, “have no leverage in all of this,” González continued, “because a budget reconciliation process can be passed, albeit very slowly, on a simple majority vote, so without any Democrats.” Their sole focus, he explained, “is basically trying to gum up the works, force painful votes along the way, and generally rooting for blood.”

And right now, there’s plenty to go around. House and Senate Republicans are at very different places when it comes to spending cuts. Conservatives like Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) agree with the House that now is the time to go big. “My sticking point has always been spending, spending, spending,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “… [W]e don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. So are we willing to fix it? … We went from $4.4 trillion in 2019 to probably about $7.3 trillion this year. That’s a 63% increase [in spending]. There’s no justification for that. A reasonable pre-pandemic baseline would be no more than $6.5 trillion.”

Trump, the senator said, is committed to getting America back to those pre-COVID levels. “And I think, even more importantly, working with us to develop a detailed and rigorous process to actually achieve it. We’ve never had a process to control spending,” Johnson pointed out. “You may be interested to know the appropriation committees were established to control the big spending authorizing committees. Well, that didn’t work. The Budget Act didn’t work. Simpson-Bowles didn’t work. The Budget Control Act didn’t work. So I proposed a process very similar to a private sector budget review process, where you literally go line by line,” he explained.

“I would recommend involving senators, House members, and the administration,” the senator suggested. “And bring administration officials with their budget gurus and CFOs and literally go [through all] 2,400 individual expenditure lines in the 2025 proposed budget. We have to do that work. Nobody ever wants to do that.”

And honestly, Elon Musk’s team has put Congress in a great position to do that. “DOGE can be very useful,” Johnson observed. “Under reconciliation, we can only address mandatory spending, which is bizarre just in and of itself. So that leaves discretionary spending that has to be passed with Senate Democrats’ help. They won’t.” So he’s pushing an old process that several leaders are dusting off called “rescission” that lets the president claw back spending that’s already been approved. “I think they’re going to move forward on this as well. My recommendation was at least one rescission package a month where Elon and his DOGE group basically bundles up billions of dollars worth of spending rescissions, headlined by the most egregious examples of wasteful and abusive spending.”

At the end of the day, Johnson reminded people, “President Trump is a businessperson. If [your managers] say, ‘Hey, listen, I’ll let you grow your budget by the number of customers you’re serving and inflation — and you come back six years later and [those] budgets are 10% higher than that, you’d go, ‘What are you doing?! Knock it down back to the constraints I told you!’ That’d be a one-minute conversation, and it would be done. This would be easy.”

But unfortunately, Congress has let things get out of hand — with a big assist from the Biden administration. Now, as Speaker Johnson told Perkins, “It has to be Republicans who are [the] grown-ups” and govern responsibly.

Hammering out a bill that can pass both chambers’ wafer-thin majorities is the definition of “challenging,” but the Louisianan is “very optimistic about what we need to achieve over the days and weeks ahead of us.” He understands, “This is our opportunity to deliver what will be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation truly in the history of the Congress and our nation. And working together, we will get this done.”

Well, Perkins replied, “If anybody can defy history, it seems to be your speakership.” Let’s hope that holds for what’s certain to be a bumpy couple of months.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

How Selfish Bureaucrats Undermine America, and How to Fix It

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Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer Emanuel Isac Celedon “has been sentenced to federal prison in two separate cases for allowing aliens and cocaine across the border,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last Friday. He provides a particularly egregious example of how career federal employees can undermine America.

In 2023, Celedon reached out to a Mexican cartel, offering to allow drugs and illegal immigrants through his travel lane in exchange for bribes. He subsequently allowed human smugglers through his lane on at least nine separate occasions. He twice “allowed several kilograms of what he believed to be cocaine into the United States” in exchange for $6,000, unknowingly falling into the clutches of a sting operation. He subsequently received 117 months in prison, or nearly 10 years.

Celedon was essentially a dirty cop, taking money from a criminal organization in exchange for looking the other way when they carried out their criminal enterprises. And he was trapped, arrested, and sentenced just as other dirty cops are. But, as a CBP officer, he was no ordinary cop. By allowing illegal immigrants and dangerous drugs through our country’s border, Celedon’s actions directly undermined U.S. national security. Because this federal employee didn’t like his civil service salary, he chose to join a plot against America.

If Celedon showed how a single individual can undermine America, imagine what a more systematic effort could do.

Unfortunately, no imagination is necessary. On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee published records from an internal chat log at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which “shows the FBI deliberately withheld information about the FBI having Hunter Biden’s laptop,” the Committee said, manipulating Twitter into censoring the story as misinformation.

In a 2023 deposition, FBI official Laura Dehmlow testified concerning a call between Twitter employees and FBI officials, at the time when the FBI was actively directing Twitter how to censor the free speech of American citizens. “Somebody from Twitter essentially asked whether the laptop was real,” said Dehmlow. “And one of the FBI folks who was on the call did confirm that, ‘yes, it was,’ before another participant jumped in and said, ‘no further comment.’”

The internal chat log further authenticates Dehmlow’s account and provides additional detail. One message indicated that concealing the true facts was the FBI’s deliberate stance, as a senior official (name redacted) instructed, “do not discuss biden matter.” Another message indicated that DOJ lawyers had placed a “gag order” on the FBI employee who had spoken out of turn. Further discussion revealed that the analyst had been “admonished” by FBI staff, but still wouldn’t “shut up.” These last messages came right after another user reported that “twitter is treating as disinformation” the story about the Biden laptop, which the FBI knew to be true.

In this incident, we see senior officials at the FBI scrambling to silence their own staff to conceal information, knowing that would cause social media platforms to censor Americans exercising their free speech rights by repeating true information. The sole reason for this course of action was to influence the political process during a presidential campaign by protecting their preferred candidate from a potential scandal.

FBI officials did this, again, without any public accountability because they are unelected, career federal employees.

These are two anecdotes. They do not, by themselves, prove a trend. There are doubtless other cases of bureaucratic misconduct — perhaps many more — that still fall short of demonstrating that every bureaucrat is out there trying to undermine America. But just these two anecdotes demonstrate the outsized impact bureaucrats can have when they selfishly pursue an interest contrary to that of the American people for whom they ostensibly work.

One fairly obvious conclusion is that bureaucrats have too much power and too little accountability. An emotionally satisfying but oversimplified solution is to eliminate bureaucracy, but that is not an achievable outcome.

Instead, conservatives should push to review the incentives that bureaucrats face. Prudent policymakers recognize the fallen nature of man and account for it. They create incentive structures that harness our natural self-interestedness so that it works for the general good. Free and open markets achieve this economically. Frequent elections accomplish this goal for politicians.

But most of America’s bureaucracy was established at a time when America was governed by people who believed in the inherent goodness of man. They believed that government could be perfected by placing it in the hands of benevolent technocrats. Consequently, they devised inadequate constraints on the power of those technocrats, as well as inadequate mechanisms to hold them accountable.

America needs a serious conversation about how to reform the incentives bureaucrats face. Yes, this includes eliminating wokeness and DEI hiring requirements. Yes, it involves finding ways to fire bad employees. But we also need to discuss more changes at the structural and incentive level, too.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is going about reforming the bureaucracy in a crude, hasty manner — one which circumstances may even justify. But mowing the 18th green with a steamroller does not create a surface golfers will want to play on. Eventually, you have to find the right tool for the job.

In any event, DOGE’s efforts have made one thing clear: judging by the hornets’ nest they have stirred up, reforming the bureaucracy will be no easy task.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Tim Walz Gloats About Tesla Stock Dip While Ignoring His State’s 1.6 Million Shares In Its Retirement Fund

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Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently mocked Tesla and CEO Elon Musk over the company’s stock dropping while seemingly ignoring the fact that Minnesota’s state pension fund contained sizable shares of Tesla stock.

WATCH: Tim Walz Gloats About Tesla Stock Dip Ignoring His State’s 1.6 Million Shares in state Retirement Fund

During a Tuesday town hall in Wisconsin, Walz said that he checks the value of Tesla’s stock when he needs “a little boost.” Walz’s state, however, had 1.6 million shares of Tesla stock in its retirement fund as of June 2024, directly impacting public workers such as teachers and first responders.

“Some of you know this, on the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app,” Walz said Tuesday. “I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping. And if you own one, we’re not blaming you. You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off.”

“I’m not a vindictive person or anything but I take great pleasure in the fact that this guy’s life is going to get very, very difficult,” Walz added about Musk.

Musk recently told employees to hang on to their Tesla stock after the company’s shares dropped more than 50% in just three months, Bloomberg reported Friday. Shortly after Walz’s diss about Tesla stocks, Musk took to social media to jab at Walz over his failed 2024 vice presidential campaign.

“Sometimes when I need a little boost, I look at the @JDVance portrait in the @WhiteHouse and thank the Lord,” Musk wrote in a March 19 post on X.

Investor Kevin O’Leary criticized Walz during a Thursday appearance on CNN over the governor’s recent comments about Tesla’s stock, calling it “beyond stupid.”

“That poor guy [Walz] didn’t check his portfolio and his own pension plan for the state,” O’Leary said. “It’s beyond stupid what he did.”

“What’s the matter with that guy?” O’Leary added. “He doesn’t check the well-being of his own constituents.”

Tesla dealerships and chargers across the U.S. have been hit with a wave of vandalism in recent weeks amid ongoing backlash against Musk due to his close ties to the White House and his efforts to eliminate wasteful spending across the federal government as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Notably, other blue states have previously invested in Tesla stocks alongside Minnesota, including Oregon, which has roughly $135.3 million in Tesla stocks in its state pension fund, which equates to 0.7% of the fund’s total public equity holdings, according to OregonLive. New York’s pension fund also possessed roughly $1.42 billion worth of Tesla stock as of December 2024, according to Pensions & Investments.

Still, many Democratic lawmakers have continued publicly criticizing Musk and Tesla, including Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who claimed in March that Musk “is a billionaire con man with a lot of money,” as well as Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who wrote in a Thursday post on X that President Donald Trump and Musk “turned the White House into a Tesla dealership. Is that where you want your taxpayer dollars going? Nope.”

Walz is currently embarking on a town hall tour of red districts across the U.S. The Minnesota governor could run for reelection in 2026, though he told The New Yorker in a March 2 interview that he would potentially consider launching a 2028 presidential bid if the conditions and his “skill set” were right.

Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

Ireland Owens

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Returns Nearly $1 Billion In ‘Unused’ Federal Funds After Meeting With Elon Musk

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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that Florida has returned nearly $1 billion in federal funds after meeting with Elon Musk.

“For years, Florida has been trying to return federal funds to the federal government due to the ideological strings attached by the Biden Administration—but they couldn’t even figure out how to accept it,” the governor said in a post on X. “Today, I met with @elonmusk and the DOGE team, and we got this done in the same day.”

“Other states should follow Florida in supporting DOGE’s efforts!”DeSantis said.

The post was accompanied by an email from DeSantis’ office to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The email noted after his visit with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the state of Florida returned $878,112,000 in taxpayer dollars to the federal government.

The governor’s office said they will “also continue to identify other unused or surplus federal funding granted to Florida and determine if further refunds can be made.”

“Almost a billion dollars of your taxpayer money saved,” Musk said in response to DeSantis’ post. The announcement comes one month after DeSantis revealed the creation of the Florida DOGE task force which is set to “further eliminate waste within state government, save taxpayers money, and ensure accountability in Florida,” according to a press release.

“Florida has set the standard for fiscally conservative governance, and our new Florida DOGE task force will do even more to serve the people of Florida,” DeSantis said in a statement. “It will eliminate redundant boards and commissions, review state university and college operations and spending, utilize artificial intelligence to further examine state agencies to uncover hidden waste, and even audit the spending habits of local entities to shine the light on waste and bloat.”

The Florida task force is set to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and modernize the state’s government “to best serve the people of Florida.”

AUTHOR

Fiona McLoughlin

Contributor.

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While Dems Flounder, GOP Speeds toward More Wins

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Just how bad are things for the Democratic Party? Apart from the quiet mutiny against Senate leadership, the party of Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is staring down its worst approval ratings in the history of NBC polling. Only a quarter of voters (27%) have positive views of the party, and a microscopic portion (7%) say those views are “very positive.” Making matters worse, the panic is blinding Democrats to their biggest threat — a Republican Party that keeps on winning.

At this point, pollster Jeff Horwitt shook his head, “The Democratic Party is not in need of a rebrand. It needs to be rebooted.” CNN’s grim numbers confirm it. Like NBC, the outlet found that the party’s favorability was also at a historic low, dropping 20 points (to 29%) since Joe Biden won the White House. But the problem staring down the grassroots is the same one facing headquarters: who should lead?

Most voters had trouble rallying around any one person who they felt “best reflects the core values” of the party. Managing just 10% of the vote, the Squad’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) just barely edged out former Vice President Kamala Harris (8%) as a possible standard-bearer. Ironically, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who isn’t even a Democrat clocked in at 6% with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) tying him at 6%. Four percent named former President Barack Obama and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and the current persona non grata, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), in the basement at 2%. Perhaps more telling, more than 30% of participants couldn’t say. “No one,” one respondent answered. “That’s the problem.”

The Democrats’ identity crisis exploded on Thursday when Schumer shocked both sides by announcing his support for the GOP bill to keep the government open. Hardline leftists melted down, urging, as Crockett did, for Democrats “to decide whether or not Chuck Schumer is the one to lead in this moment.” Former Obama advisor Van Jones invoked former Senate Minority (and Majority) Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the kind of sandpaper Democrats need. “I remember when Obama had all the cards, Mitch McConnell drove Obama nuts — twisted his pinky, broke his kneecaps, and got stuff done for Republicans when they shouldn’t have gotten an inch. They got miles. We have a Senate majority leader who is beloved in this party, but we want somebody who’s gonna stand up to this bully.”

Others, like the only House Democrat to vote for the Republicans’ bill to extend government funding — Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) — believe the American people want a party that will stop “shift[ing] into full resistance” to Donald Trump and get something done. Asked if his party was any closer to finding a “cohesive message and strategy,” the Mainer bluntly replied, “No.” In fact, he told NBC, the party is farther than ever from finding a solution to the blowout of last November. I think it’s very important that Democrats not forget to focus in on ourselves, why the American people voted, not just for President Trump, but for a Republican-led Congress in both the Senate and the House. And we better figure it out,” he warned.

While Golden’s party is scrambling, congressional Republicans seem more galvanized than ever. Fresh off their miracle government funding win, Johnson’s team is full speed ahead on the next big-ticket items on the docket: appropriations, rescission, and reconciliation. While the Democrats quarrel, the GOP is moving on an “aggressive timetable,” the speaker insisted to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” The goal? Getting that “one big beautiful bill” on tax cuts, border security, defense, and the debt ceiling to the president’s desk by Memorial Day. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work around the clock,” Johnson stressed, “quite literally.”

Before the spat over a government shutdown, Johnson pulled off another stunner — squeaking the House framework for reconciliation through his chamber by a 217-215 vote. Now that his party agrees on the blueprint, they’ll get to work on the particulars of this process which would essentially roll all of Trump’s biggest legislative priorities into one package that can be passed by a simple majority. As Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reminds everyone, this strategy is how most modern presidents have won their most transformational agendas. “They passed Obamacare through reconciliation. They passed the Inflation Reduction Act through reconciliation,” he said referring to Democrats under Obama and Biden. “It [would] be a political malpractice for us not to do it,” he argued on Thursday’s “Washington Watch.”

Right now, Johnson said, conservatives are looking at a “floor of $1.5 trillion in savings” through reconciliation. “But many of us would like to go much higher than that,” he stressed. “So that’s where all the details, all the negotiation, all the deliberation over the coming weeks will come in.”

But that’s just one part of a three-track train. On top of reconciliation, Republicans are already hard at work on budgeting for the federal agencies, which they’ll have until September 30 to finish. Now that the continuing resolution is in effect, the House is teeing up appropriations for FY 26, “which is the much more exciting prospect,” Johnson believes. “That’s when we will codify all the DOGE cuts of fraud, waste, abuse, [and tap into] the new revenue streams that President Trump and the administration are bringing about. It’s going to be a very different budgeting and appropriations cycle than we’ve ever seen,” he promised. In part, because it could be the first time Congress passes a federal budget through regular order in about 20 years.

In the meantime, the White House is zeroing in on its own basket of cuts that it will send over for congressional approval. “It’s a bit wonkish,” Graham agreed, “but rescission allows [the president] to cut the discretionary budget without 60 votes.” In other words, all of these boondoggles that Elon Musk is identifying can be rolled back legislatively if a simple majority of both chambers agree with the president’s request. “We’re very excited about that,” Johnson said, “because this is the point that we’ve been trying to get to most of our careers. We finally have a White House that is willing to work with conservatives in Congress to scale down government.”

“All of the crazy stuff,” Graham pointed out — the transgender comic books and birth control in Afghanistan and so many other absurd projects — could be erased. “The White House needs to give us the top 10 or 20 examples of wasteful spending that DOGE found, send them over to the Senate and the House — and within 45 days, we have to act. I want the American people to see … that we’re going to clean the underbrush and take the garbage out of the budget. And I want them to see that we’re going to rebuild our military and secure our border” — and still spend less than Biden.

When it comes to waste, “We’re going to qualify it, quantify it, and then codify it,” the speaker declared. And there’s no time like the present, Graham agreed. “We’ve had the House, the Senate, and the White House as Republicans four times in the last hundred years.” This is our chance, he urged. “We should take it.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Johnson on Schumer’s Surrender: ‘Buckle Up … [We’re] Building Muscle Memory for Winning’

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Apart from Donald Trump, no one is more unpopular among Democrats right now than the Senate’s Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The longtime leader infuriated his party Friday, surrendering on the government shutdown and handing Republicans a victory that can only be described as miraculous. Not only was his decision to cave after days of tough talk a shock, it’s also making Schumer the target of “volcanic anger” in his own party. As one Democratic aide put it after the vote, “I’ve never seen anything like it in the time I’ve been in the Senate …” And as far as conservatives are concerned, Schumer had it coming.

This is exactly what the minority leader did to Republicans when the shoe was on the other foot, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins reminded people after the vote. For once, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the rest of his party gave Senate Democrats a “dose and a half of their own medicine,” he tweeted, referring to all the times Schumer jammed conservatives with legislation they didn’t want. “Congressional Republicans are now doing what conservatives have wanted to see — going toe to toe with the Left and winning.”

To be fair, Schumer’s hype about shutting down the government was just that: hype. After the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the lights on and got out of dodge, the Senate minority leader’s fate was sealed. His options, Perkins pointed out, were to either shut down the government and let President Trump decide what parts of the government got funded (think DOGE on steroids) or support a continuing resolution that cut billions of discretionary spending. From the Left’s perspective, it was a lose-lose proposition.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t calls for Schumer’s head. On CNN, shortly after the minority leader folded, host Erin Burnett asked former Obama advisor Van Jones, “How angry are Democrats at Leader Schumer?” He replied bluntly, “I’ve never seen this level of volcanic anger at a Democrat, ever.” “Ever,” she said in astonishment. “Wow.”

Making matters worse for the longtime Democrat, President Trump went on Truth Social to poke the bear. “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage!” Trump wrote, trolling the opposition. An angry Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) could only shake his head. “When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and says, ‘You’re doing the right thing, Senate Democrats,’ we don’t feel that is the right place to be.”

Ultimately, 10 Democrats voted to move forward with the bill to keep the government open through September of this year — cementing a political masterstroke by Speaker Johnson at exactly the right time. “I knew when I made this decision, I’d get a lot of criticism from a lot of quarters,” Schumer insisted to reporters. “We had hoped that maybe Johnson couldn’t get the votes,” Schumer said. “But when he did … it put us in a very, very tough place.”

The speaker celebrated the hard-fought win on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I’ll tell you what,” he reflected with Perkins, “it’s been a lot of hard work. We kept the team together. The House Republicans are building muscle memory now for winning,” he declared. “We have a string of wins under our belt, and it’s good to be underestimated. You know,” he smiled, “the Hill press corps and the Democratic Party and the mainstream media every day write my eulogy, write our eulogy. They say we’re going to go to loggerheads against one another. And the Republicans can’t stand together. But we have, and we will continue to do that, because we are going to deliver the America First agenda for the American people.”

Asked how he pulled off such a coup and kept the members together, the Louisianan admitted that it took “a lot of time [and] a lot of patience.” It required a painstaking string of meetings, sorting through people’s priorities. And at the end of the day, he concluded, “We all have the same priorities. We want to make the federal government smaller, more efficient, and more effective for the people.” Of course, he pointed out, a lot of conservatives are impatient. “Some of my colleagues want to do everything all at once. They want to cut $8 trillion in federal spending. It’s just not possible to do that.”

Johnson says he likes to use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. “It took us many decades to get into the financial situation that we’re in,” he remarked. “You don’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes miles of open ocean, but you have to begin to turn it. And that’s what we’re doing. This CR is a step in that direction. It freezes funding.” He paused, “Think of this,” he said. “We’re actually going to spend less money year over year for the first time maybe in history. … At least in many decades. That’s an important course correction. And then, for the FY 26 budgeting, we’re going to make a much larger part of that turn. So it’s going to be a gradual, gradual, incremental thing to fix the mess we’re in. But we’re on that trajectory now.”

That’s music to conservatives’ ears after decades of rolling over and accepting runaway spending. “The passage of this continuing resolution is a major win for President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson,” FRC’s Quena Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “and all the more so because it is improbable. Just a few weeks ago, it was accepted wisdom in Washington that Speaker Johnson would probably fail to shepherd it through the narrowest possible partisan margin in the House — never mind what its fate might be in a Senate where many Republicans favored a different, two-pronged approach and Democrats were united in opposing anything endorsed by President Donald Trump.” Just a day earlier, Gonzalez pointed out, “Leader Schumer was bragging that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass the CR and vowed to tank it on the Senate floor.”

What’s even more amazing, he reiterated, is that “a continuing resolution is often a sign of failed governance and kicking the fiscal can down the road.” Not so in this case. “Most conservative leaders in Washington have believed President Trump and Speaker Johnson, who said that this CR is a step toward, not away from, fiscal sanity.” This CR should give the Trump administration time “to staff up and continue cutting government” and, Gonzalez said, “give the House and Senate time to pass a budget and make appropriations.” In other words, he underscored, “Congress has acted to make space for fiscal sanity and good governance to be restored. The proof will be in the pudding.”

For now, Johnson, who’s never had the luxury of operating with any margin for error, thinks that governing with a small majority has helped to bring “a lot of clarity” to his party. “And that clarity is helpful and important to us. And we’re going to continue to do the right thing. So just buckle up and watch,” he urged. “It’s going to be a rocky road, but we’re going to achieve these objectives in the end.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: EPA Slashes Climate Change Red Tape, Claws Back $20B Climate Slush Fund

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Fires 50% of Education Department Employees

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President Donald Trump’s order to reduce the U.S. Department of Education by half will improve education, give parents more resources, and save taxpayer dollars, says one congressman, who noted the greatest opposition comes from teachers unions and “Marxists who hate faith, family, free market, education.”

Department of Education (DOE) employees were told to leave their offices by 6 p.m. Tuesday night and not to report to work on Wednesday, as DOE offices remained closed and locked.

The reduction in forces reduces the total number of employees at the Department of Education from 4,133 to 2,183. Of those let go, 313 accepted buyouts and 259 came as part of the deferred resignation program. Former employees will be placed on administrative leave starting next Friday, March 21 and will receive full salary and benefits until June 9, with severance pay afterwards. The move will close seven of the DOE’s 12 satellite offices, affecting the cities of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

“That’s the way the real world works,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) told “Washington Watch” Wednesday night. “What we’ve had with the Department of Education since [the 1970s] is a terrible return on investment. Our kids have been dumbed down. We’ve been made to be more divisive. We don’t have the pride in our country — no connection with our Founding Fathers, and a God Who actually had His hands all over our nation.”

“If our children are trained to be ignorant, we’re going to lose our culture. It’s just a matter of time,” said Owens. With President Trump’s decentralizing actions, “We have a chance to reset this for generations to come.”

The firings may bring real taxpayer savings, experts say. At the DOE, “86 employees were making an average salary of $201,374; more than 1,000 employees were making between $167,603 and $195,200; and more than 1,000 were making between $142,488 and $185,234, according to Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy organization.

Teachers unions and Democrats reacted to the layoffs with fury.

“Authoritarian Republicans have chosen to attack and demean our BIPOC, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ students” with “white-washed history cloaked as ‘patriotism,’” said St. Paul (Minnesota) Federation of Teachers President Leah VanDassor. “Fascist regimes always start by targeting the most vulnerable populations.” In fact, fascist regimes rely on public education to indoctrinate impressionable students in their logically untenable ideologies.

“Dismantling the Department of Education” is “simply about taking away resources from our public schools,” claimed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D).

“I’m really angry about this!” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told MSNBC about the department’s impending closure on Saturday. She claimed the administration plans to make DOE unable to work, and “reading programs, the computer programs, the after-school programs” will “go away … [I]f the funding goes away, a kid doesn’t get physical therapy or occupational therapy.”

On Tuesday, Weingarten also posted her “solidarity” with the Chicago Teachers Union, which has closed struggling Chicago schools five times in the last 13 years.

“Firing half of the staff so that the Department of Education cannot function will jeopardize the resources, programs, and protections that give millions of students the opportunity to succeed,” said the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union. The 12-million-member coalition returned to familiar Democratic talking points, accusing the Trump administration of “pushing a Project 2025/DOGE agenda.”

The backlash was expected, because unions “prioritize mediocrity instead of meritocracy,” Owens remarked on “Washington Watch.” Re-empowering local communities “will help your child to really thrive. You now have the funds to do it, because they’re not being wasted here in D.C.,” he said. “We the People can do much better without funding than having it for folks here in D.C., who have a totally different agenda and different priorities than most parents have in their in their hometowns.”

Owens noted the role of federal education bureaucracy in foisting a divisive social agenda on the nation’s children. “The reason why we’re having this conversation about men in sports and men in girls’ bathrooms [is] because of the Department of Education. The focus is totally different; it’s an ideology” promoted by “Marxists who hate faith, family, free markets, and education.”

The move begins the process of fulfilling President Trump’s campaign promise to close the Department of Education, which has had a contentious history since its founding during the Carter administration. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published a leaked administration document showing the president aims to close as many functions of the DOE as possible and transfer their control, and funding, back to the states, until Congress passes legislation closing the department altogether.

“Ready to bid farewell to the U.S. Department of Education?” asked Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), a conservative opposed to the existence of DOE on constitutional grounds.

“The president’s mandate, his directive to me, clearly is to shut down the Department of Education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night. “We know we’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat.”

“We’re not taking away education,” said McMahon. The president is instead “taking the bureaucracy out of education, so that more money flows to the states.”

If education returns to the state level, “10 states won’t be perfect, five states will be probably not so good, but they will be every bit as good as Norway, and Denmark, and Sweden, and all of the states that are rated near the top,” said President Trump last Friday. He told Secretary McMahon upon her confirmation one day earlier, “I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.”

The most recent test results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed reading scores falling for fourth and eighth grade students in U.S. public schools. Eighth graders also saw their math scores decline since 2022. All students remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

“When you think about high school students who are graduating, only 30% are reading proficiently,” McMahon noted.

Although federal education funding accounts for only about one-tenth of state and local education funds, it often comes with ideological strings. The Biden-Harris administration attempted to force local school districts to admit males into female showers, locker rooms, and sports events or lose education funding. Republicans foresee federal funding replaced with block grants controlled and managed by the states.

Education experts agreed the president’s mass layoff will not harm the quality of U.S. education. “Nothing about the U.S. Department of Education is essential, by design,” noted Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Education Freedom. “Constitutionally, education is reserved to the people and states.”

“For a generation, our nation’s education system has been held hostage by bureaucrats and schooling unions who care only about preserving their own power, not the needs of American students. During that time, the Department of Education has ballooned in size while our students have fallen further and further behind,” said Schultz. “This news is another signal that the bureaucratic state is coming to an end in America.”

“Better education is closest to the kids with parents, with local superintendents, with local school boards,” McMahon told Ingraham. “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students [when] we can educate them with parental input, as well.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump’s ‘Office Of Shipbuilding’ Might Be Just What America Needs To Revive Its Power On High Seas

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While America’s maritime power has been left to languish and China’s influence on the high seas continues to grow, experts say President Donald Trump’s new “Office of Shipbuilding” is a crucial first step to the U.S. regaining its naval prowess.

Trump announced in his joint address to Congress in March that he would create the office with the intent to revive both commercial and military shipbuilding in the United States. America finds itself in dire straits in maritime power as the manufacturing base continues to shrink while China continues to outpace the U.S., with experts telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that Beijing’s dominance poses serious national security risks.

“The U.S. is ranked 14th in the world. We are basically just barely above Iran, which I don’t think is some major shipbuilding power,” Colin Gabrow, policy analyst at the CATO Institute, told the DCNF. “Look at data from the last five years, the U.S. is behind Norway and the Netherlands, tiny countries. We’re well behind.”

Currently, the office is only in its planning stages, with the executive order to officially create it still in the drafting stage, according to U.S. Naval Institute News (USNI). The National Security Council would lead the office.

The U.S. Trade Representative and the secretaries of Defense, Commerce, State, Transportation and Homeland Security would have six months after the order is signed to draft a plan to revive American shipbuilding, according to USNI. The order also calls for an investigation into China’s “unfair targeting of maritime logistics, and shipbuilding sectors.”

China’s market share for industries such as high-technology ships, maritime engineering equipment and “green” ship building have all ballooned since 2011, prompting Beijing to set even more ambitious goals. As a result, China’s shipbuilding market share has increased from approximately 5% in 2000 to over 50% today.

“They have the world’s largest shipbuilding industry, and many of our allies rely on Chinese shipyards for fixing their commercial ships and building their commercial ships,” Brent Sadler, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “So the Chinese, in many ways, control the terms of trade.”

China also holds a significant advantage in military shipbuilding, surpassing the U.S. Navy’s total ship count in 2020 with 360 ships compared to just 296 in the U.S. fleets, according to a January Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. Naval ship building in the U.S. has been plagued by massive delays, with some contractors extending their deadlines for ship delivery by up to three years.

The national security implications of commercial shipbuilding are also worth considering, albeit less than obvious, are also worth considering, Gabrow said.

“This is perceived as a national security vulnerability,” Gabrow told the DCNF. “You want to have a vigorous, vibrant shipment industry, which has some military utility to repair and build ships in times of war. This needs to be turned around I think is the mentality, hence the talk of the establishment of the Office of Shipbuilding.”

The wider U.S industrial base has declined alongside maritime output, with manufacturing jobs declining from an all-time high of 19.6 million in 1979 to just 12.8 million jobs in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“In my view, nothing is more important than addressing the critical labor shortages that afflict all of the shipbuilding and public maintenance yards,” Dr. Eric Labs, senior analyst for naval forces and weapons at the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday. “For years, recruitment at the yards has been hard. Retention is even harder.”

Shipbuilding jobs have been virtually wiped out in the U.S., declining nearly 80% since the 1950s, with the number of shipyards rigged for large ships also declining at roughly the same rate, a McKinsey report concluded.

“It’s more than just ship building,” Sadler told the DCNF. “I think it’s maritime industrial base, which is ship building, shipping, port infrastructure, and naval ship building and repair. But what’s missing is, and I think this is what the president was getting at in his speech, is there’s probably the need for something like a ‘maritime czar,’ someone who can coordinate from the economic side, the National Economic Council, but also the national security aspects of this through the National Security Council.”

One first step the office should implement is an update to National Security Directive 28 promulgated in 1989, which was intended at the time to combat the rising threat of the Soviet Union in maritime power, Sadler said.

“I would have that signed by the President, that would make very clear what the priorities are in this industrial base, and then set some very clear goals,” Sadler told the DCNF. “How many ships will we get? Will we meet the need to have tankers in the Navy, and who will be responsible? Not just submit a plan, but more ‘I want this many ships per year.’”

“President Trump has long discussed rebuilding America’s shipbuilding capabilities,” Anna Kelly, deputy White House press secretary, told the DCNF. “The White House, however, does not have any formal announcements to make at this time.”

AUTHOR

Wallace White

Contributor.

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Trump Urged to Dust Off an Old Weapon to Legislate DOGE Cuts

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If you ask House Republicans, the most reviled phrase in leadership’s vocabulary is “continuing resolution.” Nothing seems to raise conservatives’ blood pressure like a CR — mainly because it’s become synonymous with Congress’s perpetual failure to pass a long-term budget. And while there’s certainly grumbling about the idea this time around, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) may be heading into his seventh government shutdown threat with less resistance from his own party. And another two words explain why: Donald Trump.

With a handful of days until the clock runs out on another government funding deadline, no one’s been working the phones harder than the president. Together with Johnson, the White House has been doing everything it can to hold the fragile party together long enough to keep the lights on in Washington, D.C. When House leaders released the text of a 99-page funding extension that would give appropriators another six months to hammer out the budget in regular order, Trump was the first to rally the troops.

“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (‘CR’)!” he insisted on Truth Social Saturday. “All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week. Great things are coming for America,” Trump promised, “and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order. Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen. We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right…”

The message to conservative rabble-rousers was clear: get on board and give us room to hammer out the reforms you want for the next fiscal year. Adding to the usual drama, Johnson can only afford to lose one vote on the CR with the current 218-214 margin — giving him almost zero space to maneuver if any Republicans go rogue. To sweeten the post for conservatives who complain that this bill would keep the government spending at Joe Biden’s levels, negotiators did manage to slash $13 billion in nondefense spending, boosted veterans’ health care, and found more dollars for defense. Despite the Democrats’ desperate claims to the contrary, Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare would remain untouched.

Incredibly, House Freedom Caucus members, who are the most likely to upend Johnson’s apple cart, seemed a little more subdued in their criticism. That may be thanks, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) pointed out, to the group’s meeting with Trump last week.

“I’m certainly no fan of CRs myself,” he told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice Friday. “The whole notion of Congress continuing to kick the can down the road, so to speak, is very troubling. And considering that this originally started as a budget under the Biden administration could give one pause. But,” he explained, “as we look to where we’re going, there’s a couple of things at play here. One is [that] DOGE is doing some great work to uncover the waste, fraud, abuse, [and] corruption that is happening in our federal government right now. But there’s a lot more work to be done,” he acknowledged, “and we need to give them a little bit of time to finish the work so that we can take the lessons learned, the savings [can] be found for the American people, and [we can] work that into the appropriations process. And so, in the meantime, we’ve got to keep the federal government running.”

His colleague, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) toed that same line with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Monday’s show, insisting that the only people who might profit from a prolonged fight are Democrats. “I think the key here is that we’re avoiding a government shutdown, because really, all a government shutdown is, is a distraction from getting our important work done, which President Trump has said is securing our southern border, protecting our national security interests, and reining in spending,” she underscored. “And although we don’t have the opportunity to make some of the cuts that we would like to in a full appropriations package, this holds spending flat and gives some flexibility to agencies to be able to move money around.”

After Congress gets the next six months squared away in the CR, “we will immediately go into the FY 26 appropriations process,” Bice vowed, despite the fact that the budget hasn’t been done in regular order for about 20 years. “That’s going to be quite significant,” Perkins chimed in, “if Congress is able to move through the normal appropriations process.”

But, as a growing number of senators are starting to point out, there’s another way to hack through the thick growth of government waste and fraud that Elon Musk has uncovered — and a lot sooner than October. It’s a process called rescission, a powerful — but sparsely used — weapon that Trump can use to claw back billions of dollars of spending Congress has already approved.

Thanks to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, presidents can permanently cancel funding to executive agencies if it’s within a 45-day window and if a simple majority of Congress approves. As the Congressional Institute outlines, “The President begins the process by sending both [c]hambers of Congress a message indicating how much money he thinks should be cut; what agency and project the money was for; why it should not be spent; how withholding the money will affect fiscal policy, the economy, and the program it was intended for; and ‘all facts, circumstances, and considerations relating to or bearing upon the proposed rescission.’”

While it’s hardly an obscure rule (Ronald Reagan proposed 133 rescissions), recent presidents haven’t really pursued the idea — with the exception of Trump who tried to roll back pieces of a massive omnibus in 2018 only to be blocked by the Senate.

The beauty of the rescission process is that Congress can fast-track it. Unlike normal spending bills, the proposal would bypass the 60-vote majority in the Senate. Using Musk’s recommendations as a guide, the president could zero in on hundreds of unnecessary, woke, and obsolete programs or positions to bulldoze. It would also help insulate the administration from the flurry of legal challenges to the string of cuts the president has already made. “You know, if we lose in court … we’re bound by it,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned after a GOP lunch with Musk Wednesday. “You have rescission and reconciliation. … Take these two tools and use them.”

From a messaging standpoint, Democrats would have a much harder time landing their blows on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) if the GOP handles the reforms legislatively. “What we’ve got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it,” Graham argued. “So the White House, I’m urging them to come up with a rescission package.”

Even Musk himself wasn’t aware of this option to chip away at runaway spending and raised his arms triumphantly in the air when Republican senators explained it to him, Graham recounted. “[I]t’s time for the White House now to go on offense. We’re losing altitude here,” the senator declared. “… And the way you can regain altitude is to take the work product, get away from the personalities and the drama, take the work product and vote on it.”

As the editors of National Review write in support, “A successful effort would likely involve Elon Musk in his capacity as public spokesman for DOGE, making it clear to Republicans that a vote for the rescission package is a vote for cleaning up wasteful spending. The package should also be crafted by the White House with congressional input, so that Republicans know they’ll be receiving something they can all vote for.”

It’s also, they continue, “one way to ensure that DOGE-inspired spending cuts pass legal muster.” Not to mention that it would “bring some order to what has been at times a chaotic and undisciplined effort. Requiring the president to list the items he’d like to see cut in a statement that Congress can then take up and approve with a roll call vote would help make clear to the American people what DOGE is doing and give Republican members of Congress buy-in to tell their constituents they did something to cut spending.”

Obviously, the editors caution, “The rescission process is not going to come anywhere close to balancing the budget or changing the long-run trajectory of the federal debt burden. That will still require entitlement reform and spending cuts enacted through the appropriations process. But when DOGE finds dumb spending to eliminate, the president should put together a rescission package, and the speaker and Senate majority leader should work to pass it as soon as they can,” they urge. “A little spring cleaning of the budget wouldn’t hurt.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DOGE NEWS: $300 Million in Business Loans for Kids Under 11

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Last week, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered a government agency called the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) with an annual budget of $61 million that operates in Latin America in a similar way to USAID but separately. 

On Tuesday, it was announced that all grants to the agency had been canceled and all but one IAF employee had been laid off (they can’t all be fired because closing the agency entirely would be beyond the executive branch’s authority, since the agency was created by an act of Congress).

Examples of cancelled grants: 

  • $904,811 for raising alpacas in Peru,
  • $364,500 to prevent social discrimination against recyclers in Bolivia,
  • $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador,
  • $323,633 to encourage cultural understanding of Venezuelan immigrants in Brazil,
  • $731,105 to improve sales of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala,
  • $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras,
  • $483,345 to improve production of fine table salt in Ecuador, and
  • $39,250 to beekeepers in Brazil.

DOGE also claims that they found thousands of cases where more than $300 million in loans were granted to children.

It was revealed today that last year, 45% of IAF spending was on salaries and administrative costs for the agency, with only 55% going to grants.

Other examples of canceled grants have been released:

  • $523,000 for avocado marketing in Honduras,
  • $770,550 for cocoa farming in Peru,
  • $1,509,200 for seed banks in Haiti and the Caribbean, and more.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has canceled seven grants for animal sex-change therapy trials, including $532,000 for testosterone injections into female rats and $33,000 for female hormones injections into male mice.

President Trump mentioned this finding in his address to Congress last week.

U.S. Department of Government Efficiency:

Weekly Credit Card Update! Pilot program with 16 agencies to audit unused/unneeded credit cards. After 3 weeks, >200,000 cards have been de-activated. Great progress this past week by @HHSGov  @Interior.

As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do.

RELATED ARTICLE: Who was running the White House while Biden was asleep?

RELATED VIDEO: CNN: 54% of Americans want DOGE to cut government spending and operations

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column is republished with permission. ©All righs reserved.

House GOP Unveils ‘Clean’ Text To Fund Government While Democrats Threaten Shutdown

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House Republican leadership unveiled bill text Saturday to fund the government through September and avert a partial government shutdown set to occur after midnight on March 14.

The 99-page stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), will fund government operations for the remainder of the fiscal year. The government funding plan has widespread backing in the House Republican conference and is the product of close coordination with the Trump administration to ensure the government is spending less money, according to House GOP leadership staff.

House Democrats are expected to oppose the stopgap funding bill and have criticized GOP lawmakers’ refusal to insert language in the text hamstringing President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) authority to cut wasteful spending.

The bill text is “clean” and contains a minimum amount of extraneous language to fund the government through a full-year CR, according to House GOP leadership staff.

The CR reduces spending below fiscal year 2024 levels and does not include additional emergency funding, disaster declarations or policy riders that have tanked prior stopgap funding bills. The CR text includes an additional $6 billion for veterans healthcare and provides modest increases for defense spending and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding to patch an operating shortfall that started under the Biden administration.

Nondefense spending is notably reduced $13 billion below FY24 levels and the CR also includes a request to rescind $20 billion in IRS enforcement funding.

The CR will continue to fund government agencies Trump and his DOGE have moved to dismantle, including USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, House Republicans are intent on implementing DOGE cuts in the fiscal year 2026 appropriations process.

Senate Republicans, including Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, pushed Elon Musk to craft a rescission package that would allow Congress to rescind allocated funds by a simple majority vote in both chambers, during a Senate GOP luncheon with Musk Wednesday.

With a majority of House Democrats expected to oppose the CR, Speaker Mike Johnson will need near unanimity from GOP lawmakers to pass the CR given their 218-214 majority.

Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who frequently votes against government spending bills and opposed the GOP budget resolution that narrowly passed the House on Feb. 25, announced he will vote “no” on a CR.

Trump met with GOP fiscal hawks at the White House on Wednesday to gauge their support for a CR. House Freedom Caucus chairman Andy Harris told the Daily Caller News Foundation that funding the government through a CR will allow House Republicans to prioritize passing the president’s first-year legislative agenda through the budget reconciliation process.

The stopgap government funding bill will need support from at least eight Senate Democrats to overcome the upper chamber’s filibuster given Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s pledge to oppose a CR. Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has said he will never vote to shut down the government, effectively giving the GOP-backed plan at least one Democratic vote.

House Democratic leadership signaled they will oppose the CR — and the GOP’s efforts to keep the government open — in a “Dear Colleague” letter published Friday.

“House Democrats would enthusiastically support a bill that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans health and Medicaid, but Republicans have chosen to put them on the chopping block to pay for billionaire tax cuts,” House Democratic leadership wrote. “We cannot back a measure that rips away life-sustaining healthcare and retirement benefits from everyday Americans as part of the Republican scheme to pay for massive tax cuts for their wealthy donors like Elon Musk. Medicaid is our redline.”

The CR text does not touch Medicaid or any mandatory spending program and provides $6 billion in additional funding for veterans’ healthcare, according to House GOP leadership staff.

House Republicans’ campaign arm slammed House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries for coming out against the CR Friday.

“House Democrats admitted they wanted a government shutdown, and now they’re following through,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said. “They’re deliberately making our country less safe and less prosperous just to score political points. House Democrats will always put politics over people.”

Trump endorsed a CR approach to keep government operations running during a Truth Social post Wednesday.

“Government funding runs out next week, and Democrats are threatening to shut down the Government – But I am working with the GREAT House Republicans on a Continuing Resolution to fund the Government until September to give us some needed time to work on our Agenda,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on March 5, urging GOP lawmakers to support a CR. “Conservatives will love this Bill, because it sets us up to cut Taxes and Spending in Reconciliation, all while effectively FREEZING Spending this year, and allowing us to continue our work to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. VERY IMPORTANT – Let’s get this Bill done!”

House GOP leadership is expected to tee the bill up for a floor vote as early as Tuesday.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

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RELATED VIDEO: ELON MUSK: “America is going bankrupt and that just can’t happen.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

HOUSING SCANDAL: Biden Regime Making Mortgage Payments for a MILLION Homeowners in Default Fueling Higher Housing Prices

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Huge scandal. The Democrat-run federal government is/was using income tax/payroll tax revenues to pay for other people’s homes in default.

The problems began with the Obama administration…..

Biden’s Mortgage ‘Relief’ Fuels Higher Housing Prices

It has created another subprime housing bubble and put taxpayers at risk. Trump should end it.

By: Allysia Finley,Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2025:

Why do housing prices keep climbing despite higher interest rates? The federal government has allowed borrowers to take out bigger mortgages than they can afford. To prevent foreclosures, it’s bailing them out when they miss payments. Behold another subprime housing bubble.

Why do housing prices keep climbing despite higher interest rates? The federal government has allowed borrowers to take out bigger mortgages than they can afford. To prevent foreclosures, it’s bailing them out when they miss payments.
Behold another subprime housing bubble.

The problems began when the Obama administration eased underwriting standards by enabling more home buyers whose debt payments exceed 43% of income to qualify for government-backed loans. Such borrowers are risky because they might not be able to make payments if their income drops or expenses rise.

As home prices climbed, the Federal Housing Administration insured more loans to financially stretched borrowers with as little 3.5% down. No skin off lenders’ backs if borrowers later defaulted, since the mortgages were backed by the government.

In 2007, 35% of new FHA borrowers had debt-to-income ratios above 43%. By 2020, 54% did. As housing prices and inflation surged, borrowers became more stretched. The FHA kept insuring mortgages to borrowers who were increasingly leveraged. About 64% of FHA borrowers last year exceeded the 43% threshold.

The FHA loan portfolio is far riskier than it was before the 2008 housing crisis. The American Enterprise Institute’s Ed Pinto and Tobias Peter estimate that 79% of FHA first-time borrowers have a month or less in financial reserves—not enough to make mortgage payments if their household expenses rise, as most have owing to inflation.

No surprise, many are missing payments, especially recent borrowers. About 7.05% of FHA mortgages issued last year went seriously delinquent—90 or more days past when a payment is due—within 12 months. That’s more than at the 2008 peak of the subprime bubble (7.02%).

Under the guise of Covid relief, the Biden administration masked the growing troubles in the housing market by paying off borrowers and mortgage servicers to prevent foreclosures. Of the 52,531 FHA loans last year that went seriously
delinquent within their first year, only nine resulted in foreclosure.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Agrees To Put Taxpayer-Funded Union Work Back Under Microscope After Joni Ernst Request

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The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will again report on how much time and money federal employees spend on union activity after a hiatus during the Biden administration following a request from Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Ernst and Republican Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas urged OPM to resume reporting taxpayer-funded union time (TFUT), also known as “official time,” when Ernst introduced the “Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act of 2025” on Feb. 11. Ernst praised the Trump administration for the decision, as revealed in a Feb. 27 memo provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation, in which OPM Acting Director Charles Eskell directed agencies to resume tracking TFUT.

“I am thrilled to see the Trump administration restart the reporting of taxpayer-funded union time, so the American people know just how much money bureaucrats are paid not to work,” Ernst told the DCNF. “Federal employees should be serving taxpayers, not themselves, during the workday. If they want to engage in union activity, they need to refund taxpayers for every last penny.”

The Feb. 27 memo orders federal agencies to provide information on the job positions held by employees carrying out union activities on taxpayer time, whether or not they engaged in telework, the total number of hours employees spent on union time and information on the use of government materials and office space.

Ernst requested that government agencies provide information on TFUT in December. Ernst’s office received information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about TFUT for fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

The data from NRC showed one employee, a project manager, who earned $171,469 a year, spent over 99.5% of their time on union work in fiscal year 2023, while a project manager earning $166,393 per year also spent over 99.5% of their time on union activities in fiscal year 2024. Three other employees, listed as reliability and risk engineers, earned at least $163,000 a year in the NRC data and spent at least 48% of their time on union activities during fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

Ernst previously uncovered abuses relating to “official time,” with one employee moving to Florida and working in real estate while on the arrangement, while another employee claimed to be on “official time” while being jailed following an arrest for drinking and driving.

Federal employees spent 2.6 million hours, the equivalent of almost three centuries, on union activities, costing taxpayers at least $135 million in fiscal year 2019, according to Ernst, who cited data from OPM. Unions also used at least $24 million in office space and supplies paid for by taxpayers.

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Take Aim At Taxpayer-Funded Union Activity

EXCLUSIVE: GOP Senator Reintroduces Bill To Boot One Agency’s Bureaucrats Outside The Beltway

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Let That DOGE Keep Running

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“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” Henry Ford

Always follow the money. DOGE follows the money. The more DOGE exposes, the crazier the democrats sound. They are defending the indefensible and frankly they just sound stupid.

Conservative, RINO, lawyer, and liar, George Conway said President Trump’s bold changes to the federal government reveal an effort to “destroy” its institutions and exact “revenge” on the country.

Wrong, George! Trump wants to destroy the institutions that ARE exacting REVENGE and DESTRUCTION on the country. Trump intends to clean the dirt and grime of the government’s sausage-making process, and strip away the Deep State and its power.

Joy Behar said that Elon Musk was from S. Africa and was “pro-apartheid” and a foreign agent during ‘The View’. Elon was 10 years old when he came to America. She had to apologize.

Governor JB Pritzker, D-Illinois, said that grocery prices are so high because we are losing our democracy. Is there a democracy aisle in the grocery store that I missed?

DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLAYBOOK

Massive debt for American Taxpayers

Each time DOGE uncovers some fraud, these democrats defend the program and want more money to be spent to guarantee its continued existence.

Excessive inflation.

I don’t. The only time they mention inflation is to try to get us to believe that the cost of eggs on the rise is Trump’s fault. They forget that Biden forced farmers to slaughter millions of chickens for a disease they made up. Side note: the wall is working. Eggs in Mexico are $2 a dozen. while eggs here in the states are around $7 a dozen, and rising. American chickens didn’t infect the Mexican chickens. Maybe we should import eggs? American chickens didn’t infect the Mexican chickens. Maybe we should import eggs.

Funding Perversion.

Regardless of what the people want, the Democrat leaders want boys in girls’ sports, Drag queen story hours, trans surgery at the whim of a child who can’t read, write or do math. Allowing a child that isn’t even 18 years old to make life-altering decisions about their bodies, that has long-term, catastrophic consequences and implications.

Taxpayer Giveaways to criminals who want to destroy America.

Recently, Rep Tim Burchett wrote a letter to President Trump, requesting that we stop funding the Taliban. DOGE found that they are not the only terrorist group that we fund!

Equal Suffering and Misery for all. 

Exactly where was FEMA after our I.S. natural disasters? What happened to all the FEMA budget? According to DOGE, the budget allocated for U.S. natural disasters was diverted to cover illegal immigration expenses. Think about that!

Watching America Implode.

Democrats fail because they Fail to Plan, so they Plan to Fail. Democrats are unable to offer concrete solutions Doing solutions to problems. They think if they throw enough money at something, it will fix itself. So, Democrats are big proponents of Tax and Spend, and Tax Again! Doing the same failed programs over and over, and expecting different results shows just how insane the Democratic Party has really become.

Deflecting Blame, Avoiding Accountability and Responsibility. 

Democrats are highly skilled at deflecting blame and framing someone else for problems. Instead of offering solutions, they would rather continue to hate and fund perversion and destruction. How pathetic is that?

EXPOSED!!

The light bulb went off. The adults are now in the room. The real problem of the Dems and RINOS is THAT THEY CAN’T STAND THE FACT THAT THEY ARE BEING EXPOSED. The mask has fallen off. Dirty laundry is out on the line for everyone to see! We are on to them, and we are enjoying watching them squirm.

I just got an email telling me that the Republicans are suffering from Buyers Remorse, because jobs are being cut. They still don’t get it.

We elected Trump to do exactly what he is doing,

THIS IS HIS JOB AND THE MANDATE FROM THE AMERICAN VOTERS!

We love the fact that he tells us along the way, what he’s up to. We know he throws ideas out for comment. We don’t expect all of them to work, but it gets us talking. MAGA Republicans knew that federal jobs are on the chopping block. We voted for Trump, because he said he will SHRINK the government. That means cut jobs.

How many people did Clinton fire? About 400K. How many people did Clinton deport? Over 10M.

Between Bush and Obama, over 5 million jobs were lost. Obama told the people in the energy sector to learn to code, when he cut their jobs. Biden didn’t care about the people when he lied and closed small businesses from Covid. The difference is that Obama and Biden closed small businesses – mostly Republican. Trump is eliminating government jobs — mostly Democrat.

They just don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot.

I also hear that Trump didn’t keep his promises from his first term. Let us remember:

Trump couldn’t fulfill many promises because he was constantly attacked by Dem and RINO liars: Impeachment 1, Russia, Russia, Russia; Impeachment 2, for a phone call daring to request that the Biden crime family be investigated. RINO Ryan slow-walked everything, refusing money, and had no ACA replacement plan. Pelosi, who refused to give money for a Wall, and fought every program with lies, made up the J6 committee of corrupt liars, who are busy destroying evidence as we speak.

We are still living under the Biden-Harris Budget with their insane spending. inflation will continue to rise until the budget is reached. Trump is trying to curb inflation with Executive Orders, but these EOs must be followed-up with laws that STICK. What can we do? We need to make sure our legislators vote for a BUDGET, not a CR in March. We had a win with the House budget, now it’s time to work on the Senate.

Prepare for HARD TIMES. Stock up now, so you won’t have to buy later. Buy necessities, not luxuries. It will likely take 2+ years to work through this Biden-Harris Budget mess.

Anyone stupid enough to think that Trump could have fixed anything with the opposition he is getting from the elected liars and cheats, is living in a dream. Common sense tells us this economy takes time to fix. We all know the Left has no plan, except to complain, deflect, and obstruct. In a perfect world, we would all try to figure ways to cut spending and shrink the government. But that’s not going to happen as long as the left’s platform is HATE,

It’s critical to understand DOGE, how it works, its role in the government shrink plan, and what it is they find. Don’t be fooled by the numbers. A little bit added together from a lot of agencies equals a lot. Don’t be fooled by Lefty Liars. Trump tells us more than any other President, keeping us in the loop. We have to listen, and do OUR PART in helping to make this plan happen. THAT MEANS YOU!!

Join me and my guest Sally from American Statesman, on The Prism Of America’s Education, as we discuss how DOGE really works! I found a great article I want to share with you. Please share it with others!

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