The Washington Examiner’s Joe Concha assessed on Wednesday that the House Republicans’ slim majority is partly why the cuts proposed by the Department of Government Efficiency are not included in the “big, beautiful bill” that was passed last week.
Elon Musk, who spearheaded DOGE, recently expressed disappointment with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, specifically regarding how it “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing” by increasing the deficit. Concha, a senior writer for the Washington Examiner, noted that Musk’s opinion reflects other Republicans’ sentiments about prioritizing fiscal responsibility, including those of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI). Concha noted, however, that President Donald Trump is focused on providing “wins” to voters.
“Donald Trump is living more in the real world though, where he’s talking about wins in terms of getting this across the finish line because that would otherwise mean a $25,000 tax increase for many Americans in this country, and he realizes he has to get the votes and votes means compromise, it means negotiation,” Concha explained on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, guest-hosted by Gillian Turner. “It’s nice to say ‘we have to have all these cuts,’ but in the end, when you only have a three-vote margin in the Senate and like a one-vote margin in the House, compromises will have to be made. Not everybody’s going to get what they want here.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has also vented his frustration with House Republicans for failing to provide results on DOGE’s findings, suggesting that “so far, the swamp has won” against Musk and DOGE in eliminating government waste.
Concha instead suggested that the speed bumps impeding DOGE are a longstanding problem, citing how previous presidents and administrations have vowed to cut government waste while failing to provide substantial results. As such, Concha argued that lawmakers are “all foam, and no beer” in providing results, which he explained cut programs and policies “that may make you unpopular in your district.”
THE SENATE CAN IMPROVE THE ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’
Amid the setbacks, the White House is planning to transfer a $9.4 billion “rescissions package” to Congress next week. Included in this package is $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which runs PBS and NPR, and $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the African Development Foundation.
.@ElonMusk and the entire @DOGE team have done INCREDIBLE work exposing waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government – from the insanity of USAID’s spending to finding over 12 million people on Social Security who were over 120 years old.
The House is eager and ready…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 28, 2025
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stated that the House is “eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings.” He listed two ways in which this can be approached: through passing legislation to codify the DOGE cuts once the White House sends its rescissions package, or using the appropriations process to implement Trump’s 2026 budget.