'In DOGE we trust': House GOP governs by embracing Trump's effort to cut
government
[March 13, 2025]
By LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — A familiar scene has played out over and over in the
U.S. House: Republicans, unable to approve federal funding legislation
on their own, edge toward a risky government shutdown, until Democrats
swoop in with the votes needed to prevent catastrophic disruptions.
Until now.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has accomplished the seemingly unexpected,
keeping his GOP majority in line to pass a bill to keep the government
running, convincing even the most staunch conservatives from the Freedom
Caucus to come on board.
It wasn’t just President Donald Trump’s public badgering of the
lawmakers and threats of political retribution against Republicans who
refused to fall in line, although his sharp warnings resonated,
preventing wide dissent.
What also won over rank-and-file Republicans was what Trump is already
doing with the chainsaw-wielding billionaire Elon Musk — slashing the
size of federal government and firing thousands of workers through the
Department of Government Efficiency — and the White House’s promise to
do more.
“In DOGE we trust,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a longtime
deficit hawk who was among those voting yes.
The result is a newly emboldened House GOP majority that, for the first
time in years, is able to capture and utilize the vast power of sticking
together, rather than disassembling into chaotic rounds of public
infighting.
And it’s leaving the Democrats, in the minority in the House and Senate,
shifting rapidly to respond.
The story the Democrats have leveraged to their advantage for years —
that Republicans simply can’t govern — may no longer be as true as it
once was.
In fact, the Republicans who control Congress and the White House are
governing at lightning speed — over the dismantling of the very
government itself.
As if on cue, as the House was acting Tuesday, the Department of
Education axed some 1,300 employees, about half its staff, on its way to
unwinding the agency.
“The DOGE efforts and the other things that are happening in the
administration are very important for the American people,” Johnson said
in a victory lap, “because ultimately what we’re going to be able to do
is downsize the size and scope of the federal government.”
The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47
majority and Democrats are almost powerless to stop the head-spinning
series of events.
“This is not what the American people want,” Senate Democratic leader
Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.
Schumer faces politically difficult options — either provide the
Democratic votes needed to advance the bill to the 60-vote threshold
needed, or vote to block it, allowing a federal shutdown after midnight
Friday.
After conferring privately with Senate Democrats, Schumer announced they
would try to force a vote on a shorter, 30-day bill. That would
temporarily fund the government while negotiations continue. But it’s
not at all clear Republicans would agree to that, inching closer to
Friday’s shutdown deadline.
Lacking leverage to shape the funding package, the Democrats are left to
warn what Trump and Musk will do next.
Trump is pushing the GOP-led Congress to next pass what he calls a “big
beautiful bill” with some $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in
spending reductions, including some $880 billion to Medicaid the health
care program used by some 80 million Americans and another $220 billion
to agriculture programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, or food stamps, to hungry adults and kids.
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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asks a question as the House Rules Committee
prepares a spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded
through Sept. 30, at the Capitol, in Washington, Monday, March 10,
2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Musk said that Social Security and other mainstay “entitlement”
programs also need drastic cuts.
“The Republican majority just voted to hand a blank check to Elon
Musk," said Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic
whip.
“No wonder Republicans are canceling their town halls,” she said.
"They know what the American people know: No one voted for this.”
For Republicans, particularly in the House, it’s a new day.
On Tuesday almost every House Republican — and one Democrat, Rep.
Jared Golden of Maine — backed the government funding bill, which
will keep federal offices running through the end of the budget
year, in September.
The party was also unified last month as Johnson led House
Republicans in approving a budget framework for the big
tax-and-spending cuts bill, setting the process in motion for action
as soon as April.
Johnson said the White House would be sending a rescissions package
next — legislative shorthand for a proposal to roll back
already-approved funding across the federal government.
Other Republicans are encouraging the Trump administration to
impound other federal funds that have been approved by Congress, but
not yet spent, setting up a potential legal showdown over the checks
and balances of constitutional power.
For rank-and-file Republicans, the DOGE cuts that are steamrolling
through the federal government are beyond what they could have
imagined.
“Exhilarating,” Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the head of
the Republican campaign committee, told The Associated Press.
The most conservative deficit hawks said they are willing to stand
down on their usual antics to block funding bills, knowing Trump and
Musk are wielding the ax on their own.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has routinely voted against government
spending bills, said what’s changed is Trump in the White House.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who has rarely voted for any continuing
resolution to fund the government, said the cuts are underway.
As long as DOGE is calling the shots, "I can support this CR,” said
McClintock, referring the continuing resolution to fund the
government.
The speaker said Trump is watching step by step. Trump berated the
one Republican holdout on the funding package, Rep. Thomas Massie of
Kentucky, and was calling others.
Massie, the libertarian leaning MIT graduate who wears a homemade
debt calculator on his lapel pin, is popular among his colleagues in
part because he is so consistent in his views. He refused to bend.
Another holdout, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said even though he
didn't personally have a call from Trump, he was on the line when
the president called another GOP lawmaker.
“I want him to succeed,” McCormick said.
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