By Annie Grayer, Adam Cancryn, CNN
(CNN) — The budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency that upended the federal government at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term has stalled out on Capitol Hill, a reality that’s left conservative lawmakers fuming.
Inside the White House, the cost-cutting crusade marked by mass firings and blanket funding eliminations is largely seen as over, two people familiar with the discussions said, as Trump turns his attention to other priorities. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have passed just a single bill enacting $9 billion in DOGE cuts – far short of Elon Musk’s aim of cutting as much as $2 trillion from the nation’s budget.
And now, Trump officials are signaling they likely will not try to pass another package clawing back more funds, with White House budget director Russell Vought telling one GOP lawmaker last month that it amounted to a long-shot given the razor-thin Republican majority in the House and a lack of appetite in the Senate.
Instead, congressional Republicans signed off on a government funding package that included money the Trump administration had advocated eliminating. A White House attempt to lay off thousands of federal workers during last year’s shutdown was halted by the courts. And Trump said Tuesday that he did not like the haphazard way DOGE downsized the federal workforce, saying he “didn’t want a general cut.”
Even Rep. Tim Burchett, who is taking over as the leader of the congressional subcommittee focused on DOGE, knows he is facing an uphill battle that is unlikely to be successful as a result of resistance on both sides of the aisle.
“They put me on there to die,” Burchett told CNN of why he thinks House GOP leadership gave him this assignment. “They don’t like that I call them out.”
The Tennessee congressman says he is ready to introduce legislation and “publicly embarrass” lawmakers who stand in his way, but he openly admits he doesn’t think his party has the appetite for the kinds of cuts to the federal government he wants to make.
“You can’t win but I’m going to fight it because I think it is worth it. I honestly do. I think we will lose our country if we’re not careful with all this nonsense, $40 trillion in debt. When does it stop? Democrats spend it on woke garbage and we spend it on a military that we don’t need,” he said.
Other conservatives also feel abandoned by their party’s leadership in their efforts to find ways to codify DOGE’s downsizing of the federal government.
Rep. Aaron Bean, who leads a separate DOGE caucus, asked Vought directly in a meeting last month if the Trump administration had plans to send any more bills that would codify DOGE cuts, hoping his answer could spur momentum on Capitol Hill.
Instead, Vought said it was “very difficult” to get the first package done and pointed to the realities of the narrow Republican majorities in Congress, according to Bean.
“If it were totally up to me, we’d be doing one every week. But it’s not up to me,” the Florida congressman said, adding that Vought didn’t firmly rule anything out.
When Bean first convened his group last year, he set up different working groups with the promise to introduce legislation regularly. Now, he can’t remember the last time his group met in 2025 and has been pushing House GOP leadership to make the DOGE caucus more front and center in his party’s agenda.
An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson said in response to questions from CNN, “We’re excited with the progress we’ve made on cutting spending and reforming the appropriations process over the past year – and we’re not taking any tools off the table going