Yes, President Trump’s cuts to the government are real and they are just the beginning

Over the past week, following the Senate’s passage of the first rescission bill and the Supreme Court’s tacit approval of President Trump’s proposed reorganization of several federal agencies, we finally have some real data about the extent of these cuts and they are meaningful.

Before the Big Beautiful Bill was signed into law on the Fourth of July, Elon Musk claimed that it was a betrayal of his Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to substantially decrease government spending.  “It undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” he told CBS News, pointing to the increase in the debt ceiling.  “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it.”  “What the heck was the point of @DOGE if he’s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??” he posted at another point.  As the vote neared in the Senate following passage in the House, he became increasingly aggressive, insisting “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!”  “Utterly insane and destructive,” he added. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future” while claiming it would be “political suicide for the Republican Party.”  “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote shortly after passage.  Elsewhere, he said that every lawmaker who supported the bill should “hang their head in shame” and at one point issued a threat to fund a primary challenge against any Republican who did so, saying they “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”  Even after the legislation’s final passage, he remained so incensed about the increase in the debt ceiling, he actually began a third party of sorts, or at least promoted it on his social media platform.  “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” he posted on July 5. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”  While Mr. Musk didn’t represent the majority of the Republican Party who succeeded in passing the bill he opposed, he was not alone.  In the Senate, libertarian Rand Paul voted against it on similar grounds, and in the House of Representatives, self-proclaimed fiscal hawk Thomas Massie did the same.  Setting aside that the vast, vast majority of the increase in the deficit was driven by either new tax cuts or the continuation of existing rates that Mr. Musk and most other detractors would have voted for in isolation, not to mention that the bill included well over a trillion in cuts to Medicaid and Food Stamps, some of us were left wondering where they’d been since President Trump was inaugurated for the second time on January 20th.

Before the outrage of tariffs, there were months of hyperventilation over cuts to the government, that led at least me to identify two radical new theories, the Drunken Sailor Theory of Congressional Appropriations and the Butterfly Effect Theory of Government Workers.  Indeed these supposedly unconstitutional, illegal cuts were said to be so dramatic that there wasn’t a single government service that wasn’t at risk, from access to bathrooms in Yosemite National Park to planes falling out of the sky in other countries.  People either weren’t going to be able to take a dump in a government toilet or they were going to die, but over the past week, following the Senate’s passage of the first rescission bill, at least partially as a result of DOGE’s recommendations, and the Supreme Court’s tacit approval of President Trump’s proposed reorganization of several federal agencies, we finally have some real data about the extent of these cuts.  On the recission front, the Senate approved close to $10 billion in savings last night and the House seems poised to do the same by Friday.  This includes almost $8 billion from previously shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.  While it might not seem significant considering the massive, massive size of the budget, recissions in general are the process by which the President can reduce funding by Executive Order before seeking approval from Congress and many have seen this as a test run for more, much more in the future.  In 1974, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act, which specifically details a process should the President refuse to dispense funds allocated by law.  Under its terms, the President must promptly report all withholdings of its budget authority and if Congress so chooses, they can initiate an impoundment review process.  In this case, Congress has not begun that process, allowing the President to put forward standalone bills for the cuts as described in the act. “Whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including the termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), or whenever all or part of budget authority provided for only one fiscal year is to be reserved from obligation for such fiscal year, the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message specifying (1) the amount of budget authority which he proposes to be rescinded or which is to be so reserved; (2) any account, department, or establishment of the Government to which such budget authority is available for obligation, and the specific project or governmental functions involved; (3) the reasons why the budget authority should be rescinded or is to be so reserved; (4) to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated fiscal, economic, and budgetary effect of the proposed rescission or of the reservation; and (5) all facts, circumstances, and considerations relating to or bearing upon the proposed rescission or the reservation and the decision to effect the proposed rescission or the reservation, and to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated effect of the proposed rescission or the reservation upon the objects, purposes, and programs for which the budget authority is provided.”

This process is happening right now, but if anything, the ongoing government reorganization project is likely to be far more dramatic and save far more money.  So much so, that CNN felt inclined to create an entire section of their website devoted to “Tracking Trump’s overhaul of the federal workforce.”  As they put it, “Thousands of federal workers have been laid off or issued immediate termination notifications as part of the Trump administration’s plan to cut spending and downsize the federal government.”  As of yesterday, CNN reported that 51,224 “workers have been laid off or targeted for layoffs from federal agencies so far.”  This includes 100% of the US Agency for International development, accounting for around 10,000 employees. 86.4% of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or about 1,500 employees.  84.8% of the Agency for Global Media, some 1,400 employees, 41.5% of the Small Business Administration, 2,700 employees, 33.3% of the Department of Education, 1,378, 18.6% of the FDIC, 1,200, 16.7% of the FDA, 3,500, 12.7% of the CDC, 1,622, 10% of the Geological Survey, 1,000, 9.3% of the State Department, 1,353, 8.8% of the Forest Service, 3,475, 8.6% of General Administration, 1,000, 7.4% of the IRS, 7,315, along with some 21 other departments with cuts ranging between 100% (Institute of Museum and Library Services) to .2% Citizen and Immigration Services.  Even Washington’s traditional sacred cows haven’t been spared with cuts of 5,400 employees at the Department of Defense (.8%) and 1,200 employees at the CIA (5.5%).  Moreover, in many of these departments, this is simply the first round.  The State Department, for example, is expected to more than double the number as part of a complete reorganization.  As Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it, “Over the past quarter century, the domestic operations of the State Department have grown exponentially, resulting in more bureaucracy, higher costs, and fewer results for the American people. Since my first day as Secretary, I have said that this Department must move at the speed of relevancy and, in April announced a broad reorganization of the Department to better achieve that goal. Today, we took the next step in that process by notifying Congress of how we plan to do that.  The plan submitted to Congress was the result of thoughtful and deliberative work by senior Department leadership. We have taken into account feedback from lawmakers, bureaus, and long-serving employees. The reorganization plan will result in a more agile Department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world.”  To those who doubt this is necessary, consider that “It took us three months to get a list of the people that actually work in the building,” according to a State Department official during a briefing at Foggy Bottom earlier this week.  “They couldn’t tell you how many people worked here,” the official added. “It’s sort of scary as a taxpayer and as a public servant to think that we don’t even know how many employees we have. This is a national security agency, you know. Who are these people?” Based on other reporting, we can expect the same from almost every department, resulting in the most significant reductions in government employees in decades, if not longer, reversing a trend of rapid expansion over the last five years, where the number of government employees rose from 2.77 million to 2.93 million, plus millions of private contractors.

If the combination of these two initiatives aren’t meaningful cuts, contrary to what Mr. Musk and others are insisting, what is?  The fact that we could do more isn’t relevant.  There’s an old expression as to how you could always do more, but politics remains the art of the possible.  Under the current circumstances, it’s almost impossible to see how to go deeper or faster, whatever we may wish, or as I put it recently on X, responding to the MAGA-influencers and other figures who have joined with Democrats to overly inflate the supposed Jeffrey Epstein scandal – after largely opposing at least parts of the Big Beautiful Bill, “At this point, it’s just getting embarrassing and seems obvious to me that we’re really witnessing a proxy war for influence rather than the actual issue at hand.  In other words, get over yourselves and get back in the game.  If you’d told them on November 3 last year that Trump would have wracked up these wins in this short a period of time, they would’ve been doing backflips.”