By Nandita Bose, Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House intends to send Congress a small package as early as next week to formalize cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s team targeting federal government spending, according to a White House official familiar with the plan.
For months, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have been asking the administration to codify the federal spending cuts announced by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
By law, changes to spending must be proposed by the White House and sent to Congress for approval of the line-item rescission package.
Two unidentified Republican officials told Politico that the cuts will codify funding cuts for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, as well as foreign aid agencies already hollowed out by President Donald Trump’s administration through DOGE.
Musk on Tuesday criticized the price tag of Republicans’ tax and budget legislation making its way through Congress.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson responded in a social media post that “the House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand.”
However, it is unclear if the DOGE spending cuts will be approved by the U.S. Congress, in which the Republicans control both chambers by only slim majorities.
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson, Doina Chiacu, Bo Erickson and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Rami Ayyub, Andy Sullivan and Matthew Lewis)
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