{"id":2438,"date":"2024-11-13T22:48:31","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T22:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-spending-leaders-on-musk-plan-well-see\/"},"modified":"2024-11-13T22:48:31","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T22:48:31","slug":"house-spending-leaders-on-musk-plan-well-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-spending-leaders-on-musk-plan-well-see\/","title":{"rendered":"House spending leaders on Musk plan: We’ll see"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Asked about president-elect Donald Trump\u2019s promise to have Elon Musk draw up plans to radically overhaul the government and \u201csend shockwaves\u201d through Washington, key Republicans on Blue Light News had a slightly more muted message: Sure, we\u2019ll take a look.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, they might make recommendations that we go \u2018nah, not going to do that’,\u201d Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who leads the panel that funds the Department of Interior and environmental agencies, said Wednesday. \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing wrong with having an outside group of people looking at how you\u2019re doing things and how you might be able to do them better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump announced a new \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency<\/a>\u201d Tuesday night, a non-governmental office with Musk and MAGA investor Vivek Ramaswamy at the helm. He promised \u201clarge scale structural reform,\u201d and Musk has said it\u2019s possible to cut \u201cat least $2 trillion\u201d from the federal budget by eradicating waste. (Whether in a year or over a decade, it\u2019s not clear.) Ramaswamy\u2019s vision<\/a> includes crowdsourcing ideas<\/a> from X users.<\/p>\n

But importantly for any planned cuts, Congress still holds the purse strings. Any spending reductions need to run through appropriators on Capitol Hill, and lawmakers \u2014 even budget hawks friendly to the idea \u2014 are waiting to see the office\u2019s actual recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be very interested in whatever they had to say,\u201d House Appropriations Chair Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters. But he poured water on the prospect of the commission quickly taking out $2 trillion in discretionary spending \u2014 the levels his committee sets every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo trillion when you spend roughly six trillion a year \u2014 that\u2019s hard to find,\u201d he added. \u201cThat would actually push you into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, so I don\u2019t know how real these figures are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re walking in with any preconceived notion that this needs to be cut,\u201d said Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who is running to lead the influential House and Commerce Committee. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to see what they come up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk has a fan in House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who said he was \u201cexcited\u201d about the billionaire\u2019s plans and even has some ideas of his own. \u201cOf course, I\u2019m going to try to meet with him. I got a plan I\u2019d like to share with him,” he said.<\/p>\n

Democrats were much more skeptical. \u201cTell me what you\u2019re going to do. You\u2019ve got a dollar amount, but where the hell are you going to find it and from whom?,\u201d asked Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. \u201cThere are a whole lot of people who want to deal with the appropriations process and don\u2019t know anything about the appropriations process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reporters Jennifer Scholtes and David Lim contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asked about president-elect Donald Trump\u2019s promise to have Elon Musk draw up plans to radically overhaul the government and \u201csend shockwaves\u201d through Washington, key Republicans on Blue Light News had a slightly more muted message: Sure, we\u2019ll take a look. \u201cI mean, they might make recommendations that we go \u2018nah, not going to do that’,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}