Republican senators told tech billionaire Elon Musk at a closed-door meeting Wednesday that his aggressive moves to shrink the federal government will need a vote on Capitol Hill, sending a clear message that he needs to respect Congress’s power of the purse.
Musk met with Republican senators at a luncheon to give them an overview of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team’s work to root out waste, fraud and abuse across an array of federal programs.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who largely supports Musk’s mission, told him DOGE’s efforts to cut spending and reduce the federal workforce reductions won’t pass muster with the courts unless Congress codifies them by passing a spending rescission package.
“To make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” Paul said after the meeting, pointing to 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning rejecting the Trump administration’s argument that billions of dollars in foreign aid should remain frozen.
“I love all the stuff they’re doing, but we got to vote on it. My message to Elon was: Let’s get over the impoundment idea and let’s send it back as a rescission package,” he said.
“Then, what we have to do is get to 51 senators or 50 senators” to vote “to cut the spending,” he added. “We talked a lot about, how do we make these things permanent? Rescission was a big part of the discussion.”
Paul and other Republican senators said Musk appeared open to the idea but didn’t seem to expect DOGE’s cuts and workforce reductions would need to come back to Congress for ultimate approval.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said there’s broad desire within the Senate GOP conference for a vote on DOGE’s recommended cuts.
“Yes, yes, 100 percent, and we should be doing it, like, yesterday,” Graham said.
“You could do regulatory reform without us, but anything that doesn’t fit within [budget] reconciliation has to be done through rescissions,” he explained.
Graham and other Republican lawmakers said Musk’s proposed cuts cannot be codified through the special budget reconciliation package they plan to move to address border security, energy reform and tax reform.
“My understanding is, since the budget reconciliation deals with mandatory spending [and] that the DOGE cuts would be primarily from discretionary, the way we’d do that procedurally is for the White House to request us to take up a rescissions package,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “We could pass it with 51 votes here and a majority in the House.”
GOP lawmakers say Musk’s failure to brief them in advance about impending cuts and funding freezes — or to respond to their questions and concerns about actions taken by DOGE — reflected his belief that he thought the administration could largely bypass them by simply impounding funds lawfully appropriated by Congress.
Musk, for example, revealed Wednesday he wasn’t aware that Congress could pass a rescissions package through the Senate with a simple majority vote, rather than the 60-vote threshold usually needed to pass controversial bills through the upper chamber.
At least one Republican senator at Wednesday’s meeting said there needed to be better communication with Musk and his team and wanted to know what else DOGE is planning.
Many Republican senators have complained publicly and privately about being blindsided by Musk’s proposed funding freezes and reductions in workforce.
“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said last week of the frequent news bombshells from DOGE.
Collins said a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”
Senate Steering Committee Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.) invited Musk to the lunch meeting to speak to GOP senators directly after several of them voiced their complaints about what they thought was a lack of transparency and accountability at DOGE.
Several GOP senators vented their frustrations over Musk’s operating style — especially his team’s failure to respond promptly to their concerns — at a meeting last week with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
Wiles told frustrated senators they should contact her directly with their concerns over funding freezes and reductions in force pushed by Musk and his team of young engineers.
Sources familiar with Wednesday’s meeting said the GOP senators who complained about Musk and his methods last week were much more cordial when they met with him face-to-face in the wood-empaneled Mansfield Room just off the Senate floor.
“Senators were much nicer to him in person than they have been. A week ago, people were pretty cranky: ‘They’re shutting down stuff, we’re not being told.’ They were much more polite to him in person,” a person familiar with Wednesday’s lunch said.
With Musk in the room, GOP senators phrased their concerns about DOGE’s spending cuts and freezes much more diplomatically.
“The way people phrased it was, ‘When DOGE is being blamed for something, how can we verify whether it’s true or not?’ It’s a nice way of saying, ‘If I want to complain, how can I do it?’” the source said.
GOP lawmakers were vexed last week by a surprise announcement that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had decided to dismiss 1,400 probationary employees. That came on the heels of the dismissal of 1,000 VA employees on Feb. 13.
Faced with pushback from Congress, the department later announced it had mistakenly rescinded job offers to staff the Veterans Crisis Line, explaining that was due to “an administrative error.”
Musk told the senators he would set up a process to respond quickly to their concerns and questions, something that appeared to please the Republicans sitting around the room.
While a number of GOP senators have complaints about Musk’s aggressive tactics and lack of collaboration with Congress, they are leery of confronting him directly, fearful he could pour tens of millions of dollars into backing Republican primary challengers next year.
Musk spent at least $288 million to help elect President Trump and other Republican candidates in 2024, and he warned House Republicans during a visit to Capitol Hill in December that he was keeping track of a “naughty list” of members who buck Trump’s agenda.
Musk vowed after Election Day that his PAC would “play a significant role in primaries” next year.
