The “Chainsaw for Bureaucracy” is now down to cutting $9.4 billion.
DOGE cuts were once hyped at $2 trillion. Of that, DOGE ultimately claimed $175 billion. Trump now proposes $9.4 billion in cuts.
Chainsaw for Bureaucracy
The Wall Street Journal reports Trump Seeks Congress’s Approval for Package of DOGE Cuts
The White House sent Congress a $9.4 billion rescissions package Tuesday that would codify some spending cuts made by the Trump administration, effectively asking lawmakers to reverse spending they previously voted into law. The White House also is weighing the use of a separate, controversial process called impoundment to claw back funds, sidestepping the legislative branch and setting up a likely legal battle.
The initial rescissions package includes $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid and trims $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. The measure can pass the Republican-controlled House and Senate with a simple majority, but some GOP lawmakers have expressed concerns about the package.
Republicans have promoted rescissions as a method to codify cuts identified by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, said the rescissions “would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests,” such as funding the World Health Organization and LGBTQ activities. He called public media “politically biased” and an “unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Tuesday she wouldn’t support cuts to PEPFAR, the government’s HIV/AIDS relief program, outlined in the package.
Aside from the public-broadcasting rescissions, the package sent to Congress on Tuesday would rescind funding from a number of foreign-aid agencies: $3.6 billion from USAID, $2.36 billion from the State Department, $27 million from the Inter-American Foundation, $22 million from the African Development Foundation and $15 million from United States Institute of Peace.
The overall rescissions package falls short of the $175 billion DOGE claims to have saved through a combination of asset sales, contract cancellations, job cuts and other moves—a figure challenged by budget observers across the political spectrum.
Recission vs Reconciliation Notes
Budget recissions only require a simple majority and are thus filibuster-proof. They are not part of the budget reconciliation process.
There can be at most two budget reconciliation bills that can advance in a year.
Budget reconciliation bills in the Senate are also filibuster-proof and only require a simple majority.
Doge Tracker
Image courtesy of the DOGE Tracker
The numbers are a bit stale. As of May 6, 2025 the DOGE claim was $165 billion of which only $16.3 billion is verified. The current claim is $10 billion higher to $175 billion.
Of the alleged $175 billion, Trump is seeking to eliminate a mere $9.4 billion.
Q: Why?
A: There is no more or Trump would be seeking more.
There may be a few billion for which Trump does not need Congressional approval but in the grand scheme of things, DOGE hasn’t done much of anything.
This is as predicted in this corner last December.
DOGE Progression
December 27, 2024: Can DOGE Cut $2 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion? What About Revenue?
The answer to the first question is obvious. So let’s discuss what’s reasonable.
January 10, 2025: Elon Musk Admits DOGE Can’t Find $2 Trillion In Budget Cuts
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that wasn’t possible. He won’t find $1 trillion either.
Musk told Stagwell CEO Mark Penn during an X Spaces conversation. “If you try for $2 trillion you have a good shot at getting $1 [trillion].
Let’s presume DOGE can cut $1 trillion by aiming for $2 trillion.
Voila! The entire non-discretionary non-military budget is now zero.
February 17, 2025: DOGE Makes Huge Mistake Firing Nuclear Workers, Now Seeks to Rehire Them
When you fire people without understanding what they even do, you make big mistakes.
May 28, 2025: Musk Slams Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” for Undoing the Work of DOGE
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X.
June 3, 2025: Musk “Just Can’t Stand It Anymore”, Calls Spending Bill a “Disgusting Abomination”
Musk is correct, but what should Congress do?
June 3, 2025: This post. Trump is seeking $9.4 Billion of the Alleged $175 Billion DOGE Savings.
And please note “some GOP lawmakers have expressed concerns about the package.“
I checked multiple AI’s and they state Trump’s budget for USAID is 47% less than in the 2025 budget.
Also he is demanding those of able body and of working age to work at least 80 hours per month if they want to keep their Medicaid coverage.
incredibly disappointing. No other way to put it.
6 months of games, here is your bread, we cannot afford the circus.
Great, so the net result is cuts to Sesame Street. These people are sick in the head.
Don the Con. Our other option was Kackles. Tells you everything you need to know about the state of our country.
$9.4 Billion of our Annual $7Trillion is POINT 13 (.13) PERCENT.
If a family of 4, spending $40,000 annually on Expenses, would make the equivalent ANNUAL CUT would be achieving….get ready……wait/wait/wait:
$52! FIFTY-TWO DOLLARS!
We are talking the ULTIMATE SMOKE AND MIRRORS PRESIDENT. I find him entertaining and that is about IT.
Trump typically delivers about one half of one percent of his promised benefits to America, so this definitely tracks.
It is less. It is .13% of our annual Federal budget. See my other note.
It’s all a magnificent theatre. At the end of the day, nothing changes. I hope the Gobbers are entertained.
Thankfully those cuts will be balanced out by additional spending!
If by “balanced out” you mean “grossly overcompensated for” then yes you will get your wish in spades
At heart, Trump is not a manager, not a technocrat. He is a salesman, with a very wayward mind. His success is all founded on generating quick and simplistic images, quips, mythologies. Anything requiring tenacity or depth of aims is quickly shuffled into the past, for the next next thing. He is the product first of TV, then endless scrolling. Rightly or not, masses of Americans are medicated for that.
I liked your big beautiful post.
Peelo’s post was spot on accurate. I cannot be ANY President’s Fan. They WANT politics which I find to be deeply offensive to my intellect.
Your comments today are SPOT ON. I find him entertaining, in a shivering way. He makes me queasy.
Indeed.
I think people are desperate. I’ll admit to being in that category. It sucks. This was one of the areas I was – damn, I hate using this word – HOPING he would make something happen and with Musk’s experience cutting at Twitter, I figured there was a chance at it.
Did any rational person think that trump would actually fix anything?
Just because trump can break things it does not mean he can fix them. His massive spending bill proves this and also proves that the Republican Party is nothing but a corporate sellout.
Trump is busy profiteering while our nation burns…
We might as well have voted for Kamala. I just read this morning that the federal government is contracting with Palantir to condense all the information, from all government sources about every person in the US. This is another step towards our total domination by the government, and a social credit system. The deep state has won, despite the good intentions of any politician.
We told you he was a Nazi…
we also knew there were too many low-educated cretins voting for him. That set of people includes almost nobody who takes the time to talk to people reasonably civilly in forums such as this one. Everyone here gets their intellectual club card. But hopefully the smart people who fell for Trump won’t fall for such shenanigans in the future. If we even have these freedoms in three years’ time.
Rando, I find Trump to be, at best, as noted above: AN ENTERTAINER. He CAN be funny at times. I am FINE with his beating the Liberals over their heads, black and blue and CRYING with PAIN…they deserve their beatings.
It’s all fun and games until some goon squad is frog marching your family to deportation in an African country at war.
I surely hope that you were NOT on of the too many low-educated cretins voting for Kamala or Biden because that puts you firmly in the Cretin-driver’s seat.
HOW COULD YOU because I sense that you have a brain.
LET US KNOW if we should take you seriously.
AND, seriously, MISH READERS, get off of the PARTY BANDWAGONS because both wagons have lost at least two wheels.
I hate trump ergo he’s a nazi. fooking idiot.
Go play with your straw men.
Since Trump IS THE STATE>>>>>IT IS NATURAL that he does not WANT to change it. If he wanted TRUE CHANGE, he would be Elon.
But, even ELON has sucked on the Government teat with the Credit for buying Tesla’s system that he got Congress to approve. He sucks off of the Government TEAT, too.
I just wish that I had HAD that amazing career of his. He is remarkable!
does that foreign aid cut include israel? as for the public broadcasting ,sounds like censorship. congress needs to tell the wannabe dictator NO! but do cut off israel.
joooooos… look, there’s one. maroon.
As I said many times to the rage of The Grifter in Chiefs loyal servants, he will save nothing, fix nothing & he’s be putting the last nail in the dying US’s coffin. This is now peak corruption before the final implosion. I would get ya act together people, this ain’t gonna be trivial, this will effect the whole world when she blows.
GOP totally useless. What is John Thune doing?
Intentionally useless, it’s called corruption.
In a stall at a random truck stop, sporting a wide-stance.
Useless? The GOP is enabling this because 100% of them swallowed their morals along with the sworn oath they took to their constituents and to defend the US Constitution. They are fully culpable as they have the ability to stop this, but the Dems can’t do that alone with minority membership in both houses of Congress.
electronically depositing campaign contribution checks.
It takes a permanent standing committee, reviewing spending plans, to bring down the costs of government. Any ad-hoc attempt, such as was spearheaded by Musk under Trump, is bound to fail because it is not entangled with the general threads of government and is separate from the general goings-on.
When you use your fiscal discretion as a hammer, you’re going to alienate a bunch of people. But when you’re a permanent committee, your approaches appear to be more like a scalpel, helping the patient rather than harming him.
The need to be a bit friendly is lost on vicious cost-cutters. Social niceties go a far ways in preserving human relationships. Remember we live in a SOCIETY not a state of ANARCHY and you’ll go far.
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Dark . Sport. Blog is my website — come there for more articles/thoughts by me
He’s only asking for 9.4 because he plans to make up the other 168 billion via tariffs 😉
We are so far losing per unit, so we will make it up on volume. On someday street. But I will patiently wait to see the tariff numbers. Maybe so.
“Trump estimates Golden Dome will cost $175B over 3 years”
$175 billion cost – $9.4billion savings = $165.6 billion cost
Instead of ~150 million taxpayers receiving a $5000 DOGE check like they were hoping, they will be receiving a $1104 DOGE bill in the mail.
Every government program costs 3 times as much as planned and take 10 times as long to complete.
Often there is leakage and failure. But public-private gave us canals, railroad easements, electrification, interstate highways, commercial air travel, space exploration, silicon chips, computers, the internet, and a myriad of services every day and every minute we use as public goods: roads, water systems, bandwidth regulation for our telecom ….
No matter who you vote for, you always end up with John McCain. The Deep State rules.
Lindsey Graham is back in Ukraine
The very real conclusion is that no one is really interested in reducing one dime of spending. Deficits until confidence in the US dollar is gone.
Democrats buying votes; Republicans buying votes and dumbass savers everywhere paying for it.
Honestly, even reading this post was a waste of time. Drink up and be merry. No one in power gives a sh*t…!
Glad my age is getting advanced, we may have a chance to be spared the US Supernova
Say whatever voters want to get elected.
When elected do what you want and FTVoters.
“The budget – which includes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and more defense spending while also allowing the US government to borrow more money”
The question is how long the US will be able to depend on investors continuing to lend the US money without crossing a death spiral.
Ray Dalio thinks there’s a low risk of an imminent debt crisis, but a high-risk in the long-term.
This was an interesting conversation between Steve Bannon and Eric Teetsel about this very topic of the 9.4 billion dollars and why it’s so small. The debate was over this test of a small amount and going the route of impoundment to see what the courts will do about it.
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https://rumble.com/v6u30wr-eric-teetsel.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
$9.4B or not, when was the last time a president successfully used the Impoundment clause of the 1974 Budget Control Act?
I have no idea because a quick Internet search returns zero results. About all you get is this from the GAO:
From 1975 until 1985, there were 156 special messagesFrom 1985 until 2002, there were 83From 2002 through 2017, there were no special messagesIn 2018, President Trump sent three special messagesPresident Biden sent one special message, withdrawing a previous special message sent by President Trump.
So for the most part, Trump is the only president in the last 20+ years to try to use it. And the guy who runs this site is making light of that. At least Trump is trying. I’ll give him credit for that while also taking two steps back with new tax cuts.
The reality is this. If Trump were to send a “special message” to Congress impounding all $175B in DOGE identified savings and somehow on God’s Green Earth it actually got passed by simple majority in Congress, we’d probably be looking at a recession.
So as much as everyone except Massie, Paul, & Johnson wants Trump to cut upwards of $2T, who in their right mind thinks that is doable at this point in time?
Now, down the road in 5 years, when the debt is pushing $50T and we’re starring down the cliff of $1.8T interest expense with 10YT at 6%+, then yes Congress might actually get the message and realize they’ve got to start hammering on what will probably be $3T deficits by then.
So don’t worry, everyone, our debt crisis is coming, and the BBB is only going to hasten it’s arrival. But between now & then, take your extra hard-earned dollars & invest them in gold & Bitcoin.
And maybe with a little luck, China will invade Taiwan & bring about WW3, so the last thing anyone is worried about is DOGE cuts.
Delusional much!! There are no savings, $9.4 billion is not even an hour of gov spending. You really are so far from reality it’s impossible to come back.
Okay, Jack! Go research for us & report back. When was the last time a president successfully used the impoundment act. Please go find that information.
It’s not like I’m (a Trump supporter) giving him a free pass here. I don’t think anything more than extended the 2017 tax cuts should have happened at this time.
It’s not just $9.5B. The BBB saves $1.5T. Now granted, it includes tax cuts, but I’m already on record against those.
Your delusional for acting like much more than what Trump is proposing in cuts are doable. Congress will not at this moment in time pass massive cuts. It’s just NOT going to happen.
Any as my original post shows, this first special message “could” be one of many that Trump sends over during his last term.
And if you want real cuts, you’ve got to start by whittling down the size of government. And to do that, you’ve got to get the courts out of trying to run the executive branch.
So spare me the false delusion. Everything I’m saying is being written from a realist standpoint & not as some Rose-Colored Trump fanboy.
Again, at least Trump & the GOP are trying. Granted, they are shooting ourselves in the foot by making these additional tax cuts. But at least they’re going to sunset by the end of Trump’s term. With a little luck, our fiscal situation will deteriorate enough that Congress will be forced to act in a much more meaningful way.
when you said TACO laughable does not need to be mentioned.
Intent is half the battle.
Even when it’s 9.4 out of 175.
Therefore, that’s not the part that’s “laughable.”
Wouldn’t it be 9.4 out of 2,000?
lol, when all else fails just lie & delude yourself. Wake up, you’ve been played by The Grifter in Chief who is too busy selling his invisible coin called Trump coin.
Special needs grading for a special-needs president.
“but officer I didn’t intend to murder him”
Appears that TACO needs to take a remedial math course.
He needs to take basic reading and writing first.
The simple fact is that the only interest of Congress is to get reelected by continuing to dump billions of dollars onto its constituency, so until this is corrected, on towards bankruptcy we go…..
what is going to cause the biggest and most beautiful market crash is unpayable debt and collapse bond markets. The stock market is run on sentiment/opinions, where the bond market and commercial/industrial/government debt trades on fundamentals. As of May 6, 2025, reported that the ratio of debt to GDP IS 326%. There is nothing and/or a person including God that can prevented or denied it.
And/or to not have their blackmailers turn on them and publicize their crimes/dirty laundry (e.g., rape, incest, infidelity, drug use, murder, manslaughter, racketeering. embezzlement, homosexuality, etc.). You know, live boy dead girl stuff. Or in Lindsey Graham case, live boy dead boy.
Don’t forget the little taste they take off the flow …
Oh well. I guess it’s the thought that counts.