We have been hearing for a while that the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) under the tutelage of Elon Musk has been a giant failure.

We’ve been hearing this from the legacy media, who have been saying that all the cuts are basically fake, that nothing is happening, that it’s chaos that’s wrecking the country.

It is true that not one Social Security check has been stopped. The Medicaid and the Medicare checks are also still going out. The government, unfortunately, is still running much as before.

But — much spending has really been stopped. There’s been an open question as to how much spending will be stopped, how much can be temporarily frozen versus actually just cut. Will firing these employees actually stick?

But Democrats are caterwauling because, as it turns out, DOGE has been quite effective in stopping an enormous amount of spending. Trillions of dollars? No. Is it hundreds of billions of dollars? Yes.

According to Reuters:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has so far withheld at least $436.87 billion of congressionally approved funding, the top Democrats on the U.S. Congress’ appropriation committees said on Tuesday. The frozen allotments span the federal government, according to the first estimate of the potential impoundments in the project led by Senator Patty Murray from Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut. Almost $42 billion was frozen or canceled for the State Department, including the frozen support for USAID, along with another $62 billion-plus in competitive grant funding for the Transportation Department, according to the estimate. The Democrats also detailed $943 million frozen for the Head Start early-education program.

Head Start is one of the great failures in federal history. The data on Head Start has been pretty solid for a long time, showing effectively no difference between kids who go to Head Start and kids who do not. There’s also been some $10 billion frozen and canceled for the Natural Resources Conservation Service as well.

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Democrats, of course, are very angry about all of this. All of the spending is going to have to be put permanently into the “no-spend” category by Congress. They can do so with a simple 50 vote majority in the Senate. That is presumably the path Congress is going to have to take.

The focus needs to move to Congress, because the truth is that President Trump and DOGE can temporarily freeze a lot of this funding, but unless it’s rescinded by Congress, it will go right back into place after a certain period of time.

This is the reason why Democrats are freaking out about all of this.

They’re worried that Republicans are going to start passing rescission bills that would make many of the freezes permanent and then turn the freezes into cuts.

According to Reuters, “The administration has cited Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the undoing of the federal government’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as reasons for blocking congressionally approved funding.”

The question is how much the executive branch can actually block that funding under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Usually the president has to tweak levels by proposing cuts. That would be the rescission. That has not happened so far.

Which brings us to Congress. Right now it would be an act of political magic. Every time you get a Republican majority together, it’s a bit of political magic. The reason for that is because the Republican House majority is unbelievably narrow.

Even in the Senate of the United States, you have to acknowledge that senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are likely to go the other way on major legislation. That cuts the GOP majority to 51 votes. There are still holdovers like Mitch McConnell (D-NY), who may vote against something President Trump wants. There are a wide variety of other senators with various interests.

So getting this whole thing together is an attempt to herd cats by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), as well as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Can they do it? That’s the question.

Stock prices tumbled on Wednesday after a new report showed that the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter of 2025.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8%, while The S&P 500 dropped 1.1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.5%, according to CNBC. The drop in value followed a report from the Commerce Department that showed the U.S. GDP shrank 0.3% in the first three months of the year.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning. “Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

The underwhelming economic report hit after economists predicted that the U.S. GDP would grow by 0.4% in the first quarter. GDP contracted instead as Trump’s tariff policies drove up imports, which are subtracted from net exports as part of the calculation of a final GDP figure. It is the first contraction in the U.S. economy since the first quarter of 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump paused and cut billions in government spending, which suppressed GDP growth. Consumer spending fell, as well.

Trump’s moves on trade – hefty tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, alongside a flat 10% tariff across the board with higher duties threatened – had the largest impact on the GDP report. Net exports, which is U.S. exports minus imports, subtracted 5% from the rest of the GDP calculation, according to WSJ.

Wells Fargo economist Shannon Grein said that the topline GDP contraction makes the U.S. economy appear weaker than it is.

“The headline decline overstates weakness because a lot of that was tariff-induced pull-forward,” Grein said. “Overall, I think that it was a relatively solid underlying report when it comes to demand.”

The GDP report has sparked concerns that the United States could be in recession. A recession is typically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, said that Trump’s tariffs have spurred significant new investment in the United States. He also downplayed the impact of tariffs on the latest GDP numbers.

“I have the pleasure of running the investment accelerator, which gets to recruit these companies, and you’ve never seen anything like the companies committed to building in America. Technology companies have committed over $2.5 trillion to build in America based on your tariffs,” Lutnick said. “Sovereign countries all backing, the whole Middle East and all these countries backing their sovereign wealth funds, they all want to invest in America, and they’re coming in, again, over $3 trillion committed.”

Commerce Secretary @howardlutnick: "Technology companies have committed over $2.5 trillion to build in America based on your tariffs… Then you've got the whole pharma industry knows it's got to come home… Auto is coming home, industrial is coming home." pic.twitter.com/BHXpjTovB9

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 30, 2025

Trump announced new investments and pledges to the United States from companies committed to building domestically because of tariffs totaling $8 trillion.

President Trump and Commerce Secretary Lutnick tout the 8 TRILLION dollars of new investments in America as a result of tariffs.

Lutnick: "And this is all driven by your tariff policies. No chance this would be happening without it." pic.twitter.com/Q8nLnX294F

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 30, 2025