The Senate has a helpful “suggestion” for Elon Musk and his crew at the Department of Government Efficiency. They had lunch with him on Wednesday, March 5 and kicked around even more “aggressive moves to shrink the federal government.” They have a way of keeping Democrats out of court.
Senate suggests ‘rescission’
With the Senate firmly in the hands of conservative Republicans, who fully support President Donald Trump and his wide reaching agenda, there’s not much opportunity for Democrat sabotage.
Elon Musk has been slashing the federal budget with a chain saw and his Texas style massacre of the civil service workforce has liberals filing lawsuits. That doesn’t matter but there is a better way, Rand Paul explained on behalf of the gathered group.
Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans asked Elon Musk to bring his “aggressive moves to shrink the federal government” to them for a formal vote. That way, Democrats can’t complain that DOGE is violating their beloved “power of the purse.”
We all know it’s nothing but a feeding trough for all the pork they pack into legislation. When it’s totally clear that Democrats have no intention of actually “enforcing” existing laws they can’t have any other reason for passing new ones.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul “largely supports Musk’s mission,” The Hill grudgingly reports. He regretted to inform Musk that “DOGE’s efforts to cut spending and reduce the federal workforce reductions won’t pass muster with the courts unless Congress codifies them by passing a spending rescission package.”
Musk had a legal leg to stand on all along, but it’s one that’s open to attack. The Senate recommended way is much cleaner.
Make it real
“To make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” Paul explained. That gives it an unbeatable Senate seal of approval. To underscore his point, he mentioned the “5-4 decision by the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning rejecting the Trump administration’s argument that billions of dollars in foreign aid should remain frozen.”
The money isn’t moving anywhere, no matter what SCOTUS said, but it’s messy. It seems the whole problem is communication. Musk revealed “he wasn’t aware that Congress could pass a rescission package through the Senate with a simple majority vote, rather than the 60-vote threshold usually needed to pass controversial bills through the upper chamber.”
Later, Senator Paul informed anxious reporters “I love all the stuff they’re doing, but we got to vote on it.” He added that his “message to Elon was: Let’s get over the impoundment idea and let’s send it back as a rescission package.” Great idea. They don’t need a single Democrat vote to make it stick because it’s filibuster proof.
All they need is 50 votes because the Vice President breaks any Senate ties. “Then, what we have to do is get to 51 senators or 50 senators to vote to cut the spending.” That’s easy. Especially now that the most vocal RINOs were rounded up and deported from the party.
The whole idea is take Musk’s “temporary” cuts and make them permanent. That’s why “rescission was a big part of the discussion.”
Musk was quick to agree that the idea makes a whole lot of sense, he also assured the Senate that his DOGE actions to date weren’t going to come back and bite them. “Musk appeared open to the idea but didn’t seem to expect DOGE’s cuts and workforce reductions would need to come back to Congress for ultimate approval.“
