Independent voters want to know. They asked questions, we've got answers!
Welcome to a new feature here at the Independent Center. Because I work in public policy and follow Congress for a living, friends and family ask me a lot of questions about what’s happening in Congress or with the administration, probably now more than ever. I’ve answered some of those questions in the first Independent Center Mailbag. We’ll follow up with more of these each month.
Why isn’t Congress doing anything about Trump and DOGE? Isn’t it their job to control the power of the purse?
DOGE is starting a needed conversation, but spending authority is a constitutional responsibility of the Legislative Branch. Right now, Republicans don’t seem inclined to do anything about the Executive Branch's overreach, which has grown its power under both parties. This creates a concern about the withering of constitutional boundaries and our unique system of checks and balances.
We need to be honest about waste in the federal government. There’s plenty of it, and we should generally welcome a conversation about eliminating or reducing it. In fact, wasteful spending has been documented over the years by various members of Congress and conservative and progressive groups. Some of this came by way of earmarks in the 2000s, which are projects approved by Congress. Others came as grants from federal agencies in the Executive Branch. The late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) documented this in his annual Wastebook. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has since taken up the mantle with his annual Waste Report. Few really paid attention to these examples.
Federal outlays this year are projected to be a little more than $7 trillion. Believe me. There’s waste to find. Even on the mandatory side, there’s the issue of improper payments, which totaled $51.2 billion for Medicare and $50.3 billion for Medicaid. It’s also been well-documented that the Department of Defense can’t pass an audit.
We also need to recognize that the Executive Branch has limits on its authority when it comes to spending. Congress sets the federal budget and decides what to fund. That’s the constitutional order—well, it’s supposed to be. Congress has been far too willing to delegate its authority to the Executive Branch when it’s politically expedient. Spending is one area where Congress has mostly kept its power intact.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has identified some $65 billion in “fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.” It’s hard to say how much of that is real. Around 200,000 federal employees have been let go, and another 75,000 have taken the administration’s buyout offer.
So, while the question is a good one, it’s also not easy to answer. Part of this is because Congress is always slow to respond. Another part of it is blind partisanship. To quote House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK), “[T]here's no way a Republican Senate and Republican House are going to limit what a Republican president can do." If there’s one statement that highlights why people are frustrated with Congress, Cole just gave it to you.
I’m old enough to remember when “constitutional conservatism” was a label worn by many Republicans in Congress. Those same Republicans are either silent or are actively cheering unconstitutional actions. Democrats, of course, aren’t any better. When they have control of Congress and one of their own in the White House, oversight is verboten. President Biden’s executive action to cancel student loans, at a cost of up to $1.4 trillion, was done without congressional authorization. The Supreme Court struck down the plan in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) on those grounds.
If you’re a conservative, your thought is, “Nothing else we’ve done has worked, so this is the shock we may need to stop the growth of government.” Although I can understand the frustration, everyone should be concerned about the power the administration claims because every president, regardless of party, takes the power of their predecessor as a floor, not a ceiling. Even conservatives who should know better are willing to go along because of what they see as accomplishing their short-term goals, but they’re not paying any attention to the long-term consequences. It’s troubling.
There’s also a question of how lasting these savings are. What’s not to say the next administration doesn’t reverse course and fill these jobs and/or reverse these cuts without congressional action?
That said, some Republicans who are willing to work across the aisle with Democrats to put guardrails in appropriations bills and other legislation may be worried about political fallout that could hurt them with their party’s base down the road.
The appropriations process is the best place to address some of these issues. It’s increasingly unlikely we’ll see a full appropriations package before Congress reaches March 14. That means we’re looking at another continuing resolution (CR), possibly for the rest of FY 2025. This is because Republican and Democratic appropriators can’t agree on a package. That probably has much to do with the funding freeze the White House put in place in January and DOGE’s efforts.
I do think there are more clashes over the power of the purse on the horizon. There will eventually be a case or cases on this that wind up before the Supreme Court. This Court is something of a wildcard, but Congress has constrained the power of the president to withhold funding. The Supreme Court has spoken on the matter as well. What we know suggests that Trump and Musk will probably lose this battle when it reaches the Court. Still, there aren’t any certainties.
Will Congress pass the tax cuts?
It’s hard to say right now. House and Senate Republicans want to get it done. Still, there are policy hurdles that need to be cleared from conservatives wanting to cut spending to Republicans from California, New Jersey, and New York insisting on eliminating a cap on a tax loophole.
Your guess is as good as mine. This week, the House passed its budget resolution, H.Con.Res. 14, to kick-start the budget reconciliation process. However, some divides in the House Republican Conference threaten the passage of the extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. If the House can get it done, money for the border will also be part of the final product.
On the one hand, conservatives want to cut spending by $2 trillion over ten years. The budget resolution provides a floor of $1.442 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years. It’s hard to get there without cutting programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student aid, etc. Cuts to those programs make moderates uneasy, even more so if they’re in a competitive district. You also have Republicans from California, New York, and New Jersey who want the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction either eliminated or doubled from the current $10,000 to $20,000. SALT is probably worth a future blog post, but we’ll avoid getting into the specifics today.
Are any of these Republicans willing to go against Republican leadership? You bet. There are plenty of them who will buck the leadership of their party. The real question is, are they willing to go against Trump on the most prominent aspects of his policy agenda? I’m not so sure about that. Some members may get away with it because they’re in swing districts that a conservative most likely can’t win.
The Senate has already passed its budget resolution, S.Con.Res. 7, which mainly focuses on border security and enforcement, the military, and other policies. The Senate wants to discuss taxes later in the year. If the House budget resolution can’t move, the Senate version serves as a viable alternative for congressional Republicans for the border security elements of their agenda. Tax cuts would have to wait.
Because Republicans control both the House and Senate, should we expect a more productive Congress?
It’s hard to see Republicans accomplishing much in this Congress unless they begin working across the aisle. Although they have majorities in both chambers, their House majority is very thin. They may be able to pass minor legislation, but those bills aren’t typically partisan. The most substantial aspects of Republicans’ agenda, such as tax cuts and deregulation, can pass under special procedures that bypass the filibuster in the Senate. Still, those procedures are limited in what they can do. Hyper-partisanship is also a roadblock to bipartisan legislation.
No, you shouldn’t. The 118th Congress was the least productive in modern history. The 119th Congress may be worse. There are different reasons why. First, the margins in Congress, particularly the House, are very narrow. That has been the case for both parties since 2021. Neither party has seen a House majority larger than 222 seats since then. Although Republicans have a decent-sized majority in the Senate, it’s not a filibuster-proof majority.
Currently, Republicans have 218 seats in the House. Democrats have 215. Barring the unexpected, Republicans won’t have a House majority in this Congress larger than 220 seats. (That’s after the currently vacant seats in FL-01 and FL-06 and the expected vacancy in NY-21 are filled.) That’s two fewer than their majority at the beginning of the previous Congress.
The House can pass some minor, uncontroversial legislation under the suspension of the rules. That’s how most legislation passes the chamber. Two-thirds of members present and voting is required to pass a bill on suspension. Many of those bills may even pass by a voice vote rather than a recorded vote. Partisan legislation usually comes to the floor under regular order. That’s the legislation that gets most of the headlines. A simple majority is needed to pass those bills. With a majority this narrow, House Republican leadership can’t lose more than one vote under the current composition of the House if no Democrats cross the aisle. When Republicans regain full strength, they can’t lose more than two of their own.
In the Senate, Republicans have 53 seats, while Democrats have 47 seats, including two independents. Because 60 votes are required on most bills that come through the Senate, Republicans need to find seven Democrats to vote with them. Now, several Democrats may break with their party. The Democrats most likely to vote with Republicans represent swing seats.
Republicans make the occasional run through special procedures that bypass the filibuster. An example is budget reconciliation, but this process can only be used for spending, revenue, and the statutory debt limit. Another example is the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA is used to cancel regulations published by federal agencies, but, like budget reconciliation, it has limitations. The CRA can’t be used to legislate. All Congress can do is cancel the rule.
The second reason is hyper-partisanship. Democrats were so stunned by the results of the 2024 election that they may have been more willing to cross the aisle to work with Republicans. We saw this with the first–and, to date, only–bill that has passed both chambers and become law in this Congress. That bill was the Laken Riley Act, S. 5. Eleven Democrats crossed party lines to vote for the bill in the Senate on January 20, the day Trump took off. Another 46 Democrats voted for the bill in the House a couple of days later.
There were always going to be Democrats who opposed whatever Trump did, just like there were always going to be Republicans who opposed whatever President Biden did. That’s expected. From the freeze on federal spending to the mass firing of federal employees to Trump claiming vast executive power to Republicans not being willing to pushback, it was easy for Democrats to retreat to their partisan corners. That’s not to say there won’t be opportunities for bipartisan legislation. It’ll just be harder to get done unless the dust settles and settles quickly.
