Eric Ueland, acting OMB chief of staff, testifies at his nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
President Donald Trump will ask Congress to codify spending cuts, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said on April 3.
At his nomination hearing, Eric Ueland, the acting chief of staff at OMB and Trump’s nominee for deputy director for management, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs that the White House “will be sending a rescission package—at least one—to Congress.”
A rescission package is when the administration requests Congress to undo funding that the legislative branch has already appropriated. It is not subject to the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate that applies to most legislation, and therefore, such a move would only need a simple majority in both chambers of Congress.
“We’re excited about the partnership,” said Ueland. “And we’re looking forward to the president being able to sign into law actual, provable, spending eliminations through the process of rescission.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has expressed support for the process.
“It would be right for them to send a rescission package to Congress, for us to unwind that. We expect that that will be part of this process,” he told reporters last month.
In 2018, during his first term, Trump sent a $15 billion rescission package to a Republican-controlled Congress, but it was rejected.
“We do expect success,” said Ueland.
Congress is also expected to codify cuts recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory body conducting audits of federal agencies to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in spending.
“We’re looking to pass a clean [continuing resolution] to freeze funding at current levels to make sure that the government can stay open while we begin to incorporate all these savings that we’re finding through the DOGE effort and these other sources of revenue,” Johnson said last month.
