How DOGE is already changing the spending process in Congress

From a fiscal conservative’s perspective, it's fair to say at this point that the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has done some really good work. Sure, DOGE has many critics, but so will anyone who roots out wasteful government programs — and the more waste you root out, the more critics you will accumulate.

A lot of people in Washington have a living because of wasteful programs. A lot of people make a lot of money off of those programs. But that’s another story, for another day.

Despite the headwinds, DOGE’s work is still popular. A recent poll suggests that the general concept of an agency focused on efficiency is widely popular across all Americans. That is likely one of the reasons Trump focused, in his joint address to Congress last week, on programs that many people find wasteful.

And by focused, I don’t mean that he just mentioned DOGE’s work. He specifically identified no fewer than 19 programs that many Republicans (and probably some independents and even Democrats) would find problematic: millions for everything from diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Burma, to "LGBTQI+" programs in Lesotho, to male circumcision in Mozambique.

Lots of people don’t like their tax money being spent on things like that. And some of the people who don’t include sitting Republican members of Congress.

And therein lies the problem that DOGE has created for the administration: now that DOGE has exposed all of this wasteful use of taxpayer dollars, how could any Republican member of Congress in good conscience, vote to continue the funding?

Yet that is the task facing the Trump team this week as it attempts to rally support for a continuing resolution (“CR”) that funds the government for the remainder of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025.

When Congress is functioning correctly, it passes 12 individual spending bills for the various Cabinet departments, which then go to the president one-by-one for his signature (or veto). The idea is that, every year, Congress is supposed to look at the entire government, agency-by-agency, and program-by-program, and decide which to fund and at what level (or, rarely, to not fund.)

But Congress hasn’t been functioning "correctly” since 1997, the last time it passed all 12 spending bills.

Sometimes Congress makes up for this dysfunction by passing so-called “omnibus” spending bills, which roll some or all 12 bills into one. If you were looking for something nice to say about them, it would be that at least omnibus bills do take an annual approach to spending. They set new spending levels and new priorities for the new fiscal year. That said, omnibus bills usually weigh in at several thousand pages and nobody even has time to read them before voting. As a result, government funds, and lawmakers vote for, a bunch of things that voters — and lawmakers themselves — probably wouldn’t like if they found out about them.

However, sometimes Congress cannot even accomplish that shortcut and instead funds the government through a continuing resolution. This type of legislation simply continues funding whatever was funded last year. There is generally no program-by-program or agency-by-agency review, or reprioritization of funding.

This means, among other things, that wasteful programs funded last year get funded again by default.

That puts many Republican lawmakers in a tight spot. A continuing resolution now would extend the spending that was in place under the Biden administration, which includes extending the programs that DOGE has exposed.

Yes, small tweaks can be made to the CR to try to extract the sort of programs that Trump identified in his speech. Even if that is accomplished, however, lawmakers are probably right to wonder what other embarrassments they are voting for that DOGE will find next week.

Omnibus spending bills and continuing resolutions put lawmakers in an almost impossible situation. When Congress passes 12 appropriation bills, and a lawmaker doesn’t like a particular item, he or she can vote against that specific funding but vote for the other 11 bills. But omnibus and continuing resolution bills are all-or-nothing. Lawmakers must either vote yes on everything or no on everything.

A yes vote may mean you are voting for “voter confidence” programs in Liberia or “social cohesion” in Mali. A no vote could lead to a government shutdown.

Against that backdrop, then, a full-year continuing resolution is a heavy lift for the Trump team. They may yet get the full support they need from the Republicans on the Hill this week to pass it. But the excellent work that DOGE has been doing on exposing cringe-worthy spending has had the unintended consequence of making the task even more difficult than it otherwise would be.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.

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