It was quite the week to be in Washington DC. The Department of Government Efficiency remains in focus as DOGE and Elon Musk continue cutting from the federal budget to help curb government spending. Meanwhile, President Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut bill made it through the House. Though the legislation still has a ways to go, we take a look at the bill, how it’s impacted by DOGE, and what it all means for your bottom line.
On this week’s episode of Capitol Gains, anchor Madison Mills, Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul, and Senior Columnist Rick Newman look at DOGE’s impact over the Federal government thus far while also breaking down Trump’s budget reform.
“The real action here is with the tax cut bill. You could almost argue that DOGE is a bit of a sideshow,” Newman says. “The stakes with the tax cut bill are huge, literally in the trillions of dollars. The stakes with the Government Efficiency Commission, even though it’s getting minute-by-minute headlines, the stakes are actually pretty small.” Newman attributes the “small stakes” to the fact that firing government employees and cutting back on the federal budget will not actually move the needle to fix federal spending and the federal debt as much as Musk touts it will.
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The former House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady also joins the show to provide further insight on tax policy in the United States and whether or not Congress is ok with the ways Elon Musk and DOGE have inserted themselves into the country’s spending process.
“I think Congress sees this as pulling the curtain back on what Congress has been trying to get from the Executive Branch for an awful lot of time,” Brady explains. “It’s actually generating conversations in Congress about how you rightsize it the right way, keeping Congress's priorities in place… for looking for those programs that are either wasteful or really just no longer priorities for a government that is this big and growing bigger.”
Watch more episodes of Capitol Gains here.
Capitol Gains is Yahoo Finance’s unique look at how US government policy will impact your bottom line long after the Presidential election polls have closed.
This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff