The Department of Government Effectiveness budget cuts that upended the federal government at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term have stalled on Capitol Hill, a reality that has left conservative lawmakers angry.
Inside the White House, a cost-cutting campaign marked by mass layoffs and across-the-board funding cuts is largely over as Trump turns his attention to other priorities, two people familiar with the matter said. On Capitol Hill, Republicans passed just one bill providing $9 billion in cuts to DOGE — far short of Elon Musk’s goal of slashing the state budget by as much as $2 trillion.
Now, Trump officials say they may not try to pass another plan to recoup more money, which White House budget director Russell Vought told a Republican lawmaker last month would be nearly impossible given the party’s slim majority in the House and lack of interest in the Senate.
Instead, congressional Republicans signed on to a government funding package that included funds the Trump administration had advocated eliminating. The White House tried to lay off thousands of federal workers during last year’s government shutdown, but was blocked by courts. Trump said Tuesday that he doesn’t like the way DOGE is haphazardly cutting the federal workforce, saying he “doesn’t want cuts across the board.”
Even Rep. Tim Burchett, who is taking over as chairman of a congressional subcommittee dedicated to DOGE, knows he faces an uphill battle that is unlikely to succeed due to bipartisan resistance.
“They left me there to die,” Burchett told CNN, crediting House Republican leadership with giving him the assignment. “They didn’t like it when I called them out.”
The Tennessee congressman said he’s ready to introduce legislation and “publicly shame” lawmakers who stand in his way, but he publicly acknowledged that he doesn’t think his party is interested in making such cuts to the federal government.
“You’re not going to win, but I’m going to fight it because I think it’s worth it. Honestly. I think if we’re not careful with all this crap, we’re going to lose our country, $40 trillion in debt. When does that stop? The Democrats are spending money on woke crap and we’re spending money on a military we don’t need,” he said.
A woman walks past the closed entrance of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden during the U.S. government shutdown on October 6, 2025 in Washington, DC. – Brendan Smirovsky/AFP/Getty Images
Other conservatives also feel abandoned by the party leadership as they struggle to find ways to codify DOGE’s efforts to shrink the federal government.
Rep. Aaron Bean, who leads another DOGE caucus, asked Vaught directly at a meeting last month whether the Trump administration planned to send more bills to codify DOGE cuts, hoping his answer would spur momentum on Capitol Hill.
By contrast, Bean said Vought said it would be “very difficult” to get the first package done, pointing to the reality that Republicans hold only a slim majority in Congress.
“If it were entirely up to me, we’d do it on a weekly basis. But it’s not up to me,” the Florida congressman said, adding that Vought was not firmly ruling anything out.
When Bean first convened his group last year, he established different working groups and pledged to regularly introduce legislation. Now, he can’t remember the last time his group met in 2025 and has been pushing House Republican leadership to put the DOGE caucus more front and center on the party’s agenda.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget said in response to questions from CNN, “We are excited about the progress we have made over the past year to reduce spending and reform the appropriations process, and we will not eliminate any tools in the future.”
However, there appears to be little incentive in Congress to push through another controversial cut just months before the midterm elections. Buoyed by successful Medicaid fraud claims in Minnesota late last year, Trump administration officials have turned their focus to targeting more precise cuts to the program in various blue states.
In recent months, the administration has tried to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to states led by Democrats who they say are wasted or mismanaged — a strategy seen as more efficient, more politically advantageous, and requiring less direct intervention from a Republican Congress that barely holds a majority.
“DOGE’s success was in steering the Trump coalition toward fraud,” one person familiar with the matter said. “We have to understand the positive consequences of potentially missing the mark.”
Still, that did little to mollify conservatives who had viewed Trump’s return to office as their best chance of permanently reducing vast swaths of the federal government’s power.
Instead of pursuing the “multiple” repeal package House Speaker Mike Johnson promised in June 2025, many conservatives now believe their own party leadership is undercutting cost-cutting efforts by passing government spending bills that fund programs DOGE previously viewed as problematic and wanted to defund.
“Leadership doesn’t care because they need Democrats to vote for the bill to pass. They’re not going to focus on conservatives,” Rep. Greg Steube, one of 21 House Republicans who voted against the latest government funding deal, told CNN.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscal conservative who has often spoken out against his own party, described himself as “the only member of Congress left to support a DOGE vote” and said he was not surprised by the dwindling support for the effort within his party.
“I didn’t believe they were sincere from the beginning,” he said.
Johnson told CNN “no” DOGE is not dead, but he did not elaborate. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to comment.
Rep. Aaron Bean speaks with his staff in the Rayburn House Office Building on May 8, 2024, in Washington, DC. – Anna Chanmemaker/Getty Images North America/Getty Images
‘We didn’t see that level of chaos and controversy. Thank God’
Trump administration officials acknowledged that DOGE no longer operates as a “centralized” organization. While Republican lawmakers will say they have sought to reduce excessive waste, fraud and abuse of power, many moderate Republicans are quietly celebrating the end of Musk’s tenure as they try to repair relations with federal workers who felt demonized during the billionaire’s tenure.
“A year ago, you had young people from God knows where coming into federal agencies and telling people you’re gone. We didn’t see that level of chaos and controversy. Thank God,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told CNN. “We’re in different places.”
Rep. Rob Bresnahan said he supports eliminating excessive federal spending but also appreciates the shift in the effort since Musk left office. Bresnahan, who represents 10,000 federal workers in his district and one of the largest Social Security Administration call centers in the country, recalled multiple conversations with constituents about their concerns about privacy and data.
“It’s really disheartening to see the morale of the workforce there suffer. Their concerns certainly don’t fall on deaf ears,” Bresnahan said.
Now, some moderate Republicans feel they need to find ways to restore trust among federal workers and undo the Trump administration’s actions. Bresnahan was one of a handful of Republicans who voted in the House last year to restore collective bargaining rights to federal workers, defying their own party leadership and the Trump administration.
House Speaker Mike Johnson at the U.S. Capitol on February 10 in Washington, DC. – Kevin Dickey/Getty Images
But even if the effort is now less public, appropriators believe that cutting excess spending is being done in earnest behind the scenes through the appropriations process, as was always expected.
Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees State Department funding, said he has worked closely with OMB to cut spending by 16% in fiscal 2026.
“You can do all the repeal you want, but you have a different president, a different administration, and it’s all in vain, and that’s why, working with us, we’ve been able to get these into the appropriations bill,” Diaz-Balart told CNN.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole said he would consider DOGE’s recommendations but would have to consider what could pass the House and Senate.
“We have a much larger Trump budget than we did a year ago,” Cole told CNN. “We have a lot of good ideas. Some of them we like, others we like, but not necessarily ones we can pass. This is still a bipartisan, bicameral process.”
Meanwhile, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, who co-leads the DOGE caucus with Bean, said he now sees his role as providing DOGE staff with context on the programs they want to cut to help them make decisions.
“A lot of it was behind-the-scenes discussions,” Sessions said.
Rep. Tim Burchett speaks to members of the media on Capitol Hill on July 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. -Nathan Howard/Reuters/File
Some Republicans say DOGE lost momentum in part because the group was unable to build beyond Musk’s megaphone.
“What I’ve always been concerned about is that they never really put up the scaffolding to make it a repeatable, measurable process,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.
Tillis called Musk “a great catalyst, but unless you have follow-through, you’re going to see all the missteps, you’re going to see inefficiencies.”
In Burchett’s view, part of the reason his party was never able to fully embrace Musk’s goals was his own party’s “arrogance” in believing they could execute better than the billionaires who came in as government outsiders.
“Everybody wants to stay in power,” Burchett told CNN. “The arrogance of this approach is that they want to stay in power and they think it won’t work without them. The truth is, it will work regardless of them.”
Burchett, who takes over the DOGE subcommittee from former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, was scheduled to hold the subcommittee’s first hearing since September 2025 on Wednesday, but said on the X that the hearing was postponed “due to illness” and would be rescheduled as soon as possible.
One Republican congressman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, lamented that Musk’s aggressive approach even sparked a movement to cut federal spending.
“In some ways, I’m sad that DOGE isn’t more successful. I’m a little annoyed with Elon. We’re heading toward bankruptcy. Obviously, more efficient government is part of the solution. But Elon’s approach isn’t serious enough to get us the progress we need. That’s really unfortunate. I think it sets us back a lot in our pursuit of efficiency,” the lawmaker said.
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