GOP budget hawks furious with MAGA for ignoring waste

After President Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, his administration carried out a program of mass layoffs in the federal government and did so with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its then-leader, Elon Musk. A broad range of agencies were targeted for major downsizing, from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Democratic critics of the effort argued that the Trump Administration/DOGE cuts of 2025 were the worst of both worlds, removing a lot of knowledge and expertise from the federal government while failing to shrink the federal deficit in a meaningful way.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and other GOP budget hawks are complaining that the federal government still has too much waste and that DOGE missed the mark in 2025.

In an article published on February 12, CNN reporters Annie Grayer and Adam Cancryn explain, "Rep. Thomas Massie, a fiscal conservative who often speaks out against his own party, coined himself 'the only DOGE-voting congressman left' and said he wasn't surprised that support for the effort has dwindled in his party. 'I never really believed they were sincere to start with,' he said. (House Speaker Mike) Johnson told CNN 'no,' DOGE is not dead, but he did not elaborate."

Grayer and Cancryn report that "many conservatives" in Congress "now feel that their own party leadership is undercutting cost-cutting efforts by passing government spending bills that fund programs DOGE previously identified as problematic and wanted to defund."

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Florida) told CNN, "Leadership doesn't care because they have Democrats to vote on the bill to pass them. They're not paying attention to conservatives."

Meanwhile, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a moderate conservative, is criticizing the way the Trump Administration/DOGE cuts were handled in 2025.

Murkowski told CNN, "A year ago, you had young people from gosh knows where coming into federal agencies and telling people, 'You're gone.' We're not seeing that level of chaos and controversy, thank goodness. We are at a different place."