“While stumping for Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk said he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. After Mr. Trump took office and placed Mr. Musk in charge of the budget-slashing so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk lowered that projection by half, to $1 trillion in the upcoming fiscal year,” the New York Times reports.

“In a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk appeared to set his group’s goal lower still.”

Said Musk: “I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in ’26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion.”

Elliot Morris: “Real federal spending is higher in 2025 so far than in past years, and DOGE is making it harder to raise revenue.”

Punchbowl News: “After months of preliminary jockeying, now comes the really hard part – drafting a bill. Johnson’s challenges in juggling concerns from the center and right of his conference over spending cuts this morning underscored just how difficult it’s going to be. Then throw in the tax portion of the package and you have an enormously complex Rubik’s Cube to solve.”

“House Republicans have set a Memorial Day goal for the reconciliation bill, so they’ll want committees to move quickly to put pencil to paper and move toward markups. But they have to bridge some very serious internal political and policy gaps.”

“Just think about this: HFC members and other conservatives touted this morning that Johnson committed to them he’ll cut $1.5 trillion in federal spending and adhere to tying the House Ways and Means Committee’s $4.5 trillion in room for tax cuts to achieving $2 trillion in spending reductions. But Republicans worried about deep Medicaid cuts said Johnson reassured them during the vote. Making both groups happy may very well be impossible.”

Politico: “That process will pit fiscal hawks against moderate Republicans as GOP leaders try to square their conflicting demands to protect safety-net programs like Medicaid while cutting trillions of dollars from that slice of the federal budget.”