The following is from Tom Wood's newsletter.

You've surely seen the back-and-forth between Donald Trump and Thomas Massie, Republican congressman from Kentucky.

The president is unhappy that Massie won't support the so-called "continuing resolution" to keep the government funded for another six months, and is threatening to primary him.

Congressman Massie, I remind the reader, defended the president over Russiagate and January 6 at a time when many scared Republicans were running home crying to their mothers.

Massie's point is: how can we possibly justify a spending bill that spends all the money DOGE has identified as wasteful?

The president just got elected, and he has more influence now than he'll have in six months or at any other time in his term, so why not fight back now?

We keep getting told: now isn't the time to fight. Wait six months and we'll fight next time.

Now I understand if you youngsters haven't caught on yet, but there's no excuse for us oldsters, who should have figured out the trick by now: next time never comes. So you may as well fight right now.

David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, is suggesting: rather than just capitulate to the Democrats as usual, why not introduce a perfectly constitutional rescission package, clawing back some of the leftover spending, in order to get the budget at least partly under control, as a condition of approving any continuing resolution?

Why the hell not indeed?

Why simply cave, and then get angry at the guy who refuses to go along?

Stockman explains that the spending situation "is a consequence of the stacked institutional mechanics that Elon Musk is just beginning to grasp":

For example, the appropriations authority for every one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of idiotic foreign aid contracts that DOGE has exposed and cancelled must by law be recycled and re-spent on another contract. So the “savings” will be therefore be wasted on projects perhaps only slightly less stupid but in any case no less unaffordable.

We are referring to the impoundment control act of 1974 and the passel of UniParty-appointed Federal district judges sitting out there across the land waiting to pounce in favor of lawsuits claiming funds are being illegally withheld by the executive....

Fortunately there is a pretty creative hack.... To wit, as Elon Musk apparently discovered earlier this week the congressional rescission tool is a pretty good workaround to un-spend money that has already been appropriated.

This method of cutting existing spending authority does require Congressional approval within 45 days, but rescissions are subject to an up-or-down vote with no amendments and no filibuster in the Senate.

So what the DOGE team needs to do right now is bundle up a massive pile of rescissions and send them to Capitol Hill to be approved as a pre-condition for passage of the next CR. We think there is enough fraud, waste and abuse based budget authority lying around the Federal bureaucracy such that a massive $600 billion rescission package could be sent to the Hill within the next week; and it should rightly become known as “The Mother of All Rescissions,” or MOAR!

The White House proposition to Congress would be simple. Either pass MOAR or shutdown the government when the current CR expires on March 14th. You choose.

That's much better than just caving to the Democrats.

And what specifically would he ask for?

This:

Rescission of Leftover Pandemic Relief Appropriations at SBA and the Departments of Energy, Education, HHS, Labor and HUD: $139 billion. Cancellation of Leftover Green New Deal/IRA funding: $317 billion. Rescission of Wasteful Foreign Aid Spending: $30 billion. 6.9% Across-the board Rescission of FY 2025 CR Funding Levels for all Discretionary Appropriations: $114 billion. Total Rescission Package (MOAR): $600 billion.

You won the electoral college, the popular vote, and all the swing states. Act like it! Criticizing Thomas Massie instead of following David Stockman's recommendation is an extremely sad move.

Just today I spoke to David about Massie and the President, as well as about Stockman's new book: How to Cut $2 Trillion.

That episode of the Tom Woods Show will be released later tonight.

Tom Woods