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Congressional Republicans are racing to harness the momentum left behind by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and the leaders of a new House GOP initiative are hoping they have the solution.
“You tell people the word ‘rescission,’ in my district, I’m sure that polls pretty low, but they know waste, they know fraud, and they know abuse,” Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., told Fox News Digital.
“This is why this process needs to be not only explained to our own members, but also to the population out here that might not know what the heck a rescission is, but know that they want the wasteful spending to end.”
Moore is leading the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) new task force, aimed at getting both fellow House Republicans and members of the American public on board with the GOP on a mechanism for spending cuts known as rescissions.
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Rescissions proposals are requests from the White House for cuts to funding already approved by Congress in the current fiscal year.
Once submitted to Capitol Hill, lawmakers have 45 days to pass the proposal, or it is considered rejected.
The House is voting on the first of what Republican leaders hope are several such proposals this week – President Donald Trump sent Congress a request to cut $9.4 billion in funding to PBS, NPR, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The $9.4 billion figure is part of a larger $180 billion sum of waste that Musk said his DOGE efforts had uncovered.
RSC Chair August Pfluger, R-Texas, said Moore “is able to educate our members, work with the White House, liaise directly with [the Office of Management and Budget], talk to leadership, voice the conservative concerns…and to dispel myth and speak truth.”
Pfluger’s 189-member RSC serves as a de facto conservative think tank of sorts for the House GOP.
It’s a natural extension of the group’s work to focus on how to message government spending cuts, particularly while Democrats are accusing the GOP of trying to rip away critical programs.
Pfluger and Moore signaled the task force’s most immediate goal will be easing concerns of moderate Republicans who may be wary of the $9.4 billion spending cut plan.
With just a razor-thin majority, House GOP leaders can afford no more than three defections to pass legislation along party lines.
“If members do have problems, the conservative conscience of our conference, RSC, can help them understand why it’s important to vote on it. And that’s what Riley is going to do,” Pfluger said.
Both suggested they would like to see future rescissions packages, but would not go into detail about what could be cut.
Moore noted he was on the Appropriations Committee, the keepers of the House’s purse strings, and that there were ongoing conversations between members of that panel and the White House about identifying future rollbacks.
And both Pfluger and Moore said they were undaunted by Musk’s somewhat dramatic departure from the federal government – insisting the public was still behind the idea of DOGE, even without the Tesla billionaire at the forefront.
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“I don’t think the mainstream media is covering that aspect of it, because they want to talk about this breakup between the president and Elon Musk, but the president said as recently as today that he still believes in what he did,” Pfluger said.
Moore added, “Media cycles moved extraordinarily fast. I think obviously there was a lot of excitement when it was first announced. But I can tell you when I’m doing Lincoln Day dinners and going around the counties in West Virginia, they’re still acutely focused on this. I hear from folks all the time…it is very much the average American still wants to see this happen.”
“I think they’re, you know, they’re just waiting for us to do the right thing,” Moore said.
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