EDITORIAL: Getting Congress involved in federal spending reform

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, is no stranger to shining a light on government excess. Each year in December, he releases his “Festivus” report highlighting egregious examples of wasteful federal spending. The exercise is an homage to the late Sen. William Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece” awards and former Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual “Wastebook.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Sen. Paul enthusiastically supports the efforts of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “We’ve been pointing this out for a decade,” he told Reason magazine this week, “but now we finally have an administration that’s interested in it — they are canceling contracts, locking doors, firing people. There really is this disrupting force, and that’s good.”

Critics argue that any savings identified so far represents only a mole on the backside of the corpulent federal leviathan. But fiscal responsibility — for individuals, families, private businesses or governments — requires attention to detail. Blithely ignoring even small savings creates a climate in which it’s easier to rationalize or overlook more significant expenditures.

“Why would we still not start with the most egregious stuff and get rid of it?” Sen. Paul told Reason. “Ultimately, how do you get to better spending? You get better people in government, or you give them less money. I don’t think we can really expect to get better people, less bureaucrats in government. … The only way you get less waste is to give them less money to spend.”

To that end, Sen. Paul offers a useful suggestion to the Trump administration. In a meeting this week with GOP senators and Vice President JD Vance, Reason reports, the Kentuckian urged the White House to create a “rescission” package of $500 billion in potential budget savings that would go to Congress for a vote. Such an exercise would serve several important purposes.

First, it would undermine charges that President Donald Trump is acting outside the authority of his office by unilaterally making certain spending and personnel decisions. A congressional vote on spending adjustments offered by DOGE would make moot many of the lawsuits challenging the administration’s power to act, while also forcing the White House to carefully select its financial targets for maximum political and public support.

Second, a rescission package would put congressional Democrats on the spot. So far, they have been remarkably unconcerned about the optics of defending the bloated federal government from fiscal scrutiny, elevating public employee unions and Washington bureaucracies above the American taxpayers who must fund them. Is there no program or line item in the federal budget that they won’t justify? Let them go on the record as midterm elections near.

The White House should heed Sen. Paul’s advice.