Sen. Kennedy: “When You Trim Fat, Pigs Squeal”; Rescission Bill in 3 Weeks; Social Security Death Records

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana delivered a wide-ranging assessment of the administration’s economic agenda on Fox Business in March 2025, coining the phrase that defined the DOGE opposition: “The tofu crowd is mad, but you know, when you trim fat, pigs squeal. That’s just the way the world works.” Kennedy revealed that senators had discussed rescission authority with Elon Musk “yesterday at lunch” and predicted the first rescission package would reach the Senate floor “within the next three weeks” — a move that would “end the worry about all the lawsuits.” He described his seven-year effort to force Social Security to share its death records with other agencies to stop sending checks to dead people, and offered candid thoughts on tariffs: “I’m worried,” but “if they start to cause inflation, the president will back away."

"When You Trim Fat, Pigs Squeal”

Kennedy opened with the colorful assessment that became the segment’s defining quote.

“Most of the publicity has been on the spending cuts, and look, I’m all for them,” Kennedy told host Larry Kudlow. “I think Elon Musk is a rock star.”

Then the line: “The tofu crowd is mad. But you know, when you trim fat, pigs squeal. That’s just the way the world works. That’s a law of nature.”

The “tofu crowd” was Kennedy’s shorthand for the progressive activists, government employee unions, and media commentators who had been the loudest critics of DOGE’s spending cuts. The “pigs squeal” metaphor reframed the opposition not as principled policy disagreement but as the predictable noise produced by those who had been feeding at the public trough and now found their meals being taken away.

Kennedy then laid out the multi-pronged approach to fighting inflation. “You need much less government spending to hold down prices. And I think the Federal Reserve means much less money printing also,” he said. “I think it’s a multi-pronged effort.”

He described the economic logic: “How did we get this inflation and these high prices? Government overspent. How are we going to get out of it? We’re going to have to spend less money.”

Kennedy added a characteristic aside about the dollar’s reserve currency status: “The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Actually, that’s probably not true. I think the real reserve currency in the world is a Taylor Swift concert ticket. But the U.S. dollar is number two.”

Rescission: “Pounce Like a Ninja”

Kennedy revealed that the legislative mechanism for making DOGE’s spending cuts permanent was being actively developed.

“We talked about it with Elon Musk yesterday at lunch,” Kennedy said. “We need to pounce on this concept of rescission like a ninja.”

He explained the process: “That just means you introduce a bill to take the spending cuts found by Mr. Musk and to have Congress take the money back. It just takes a majority vote.”

Kennedy provided the timeline: “That’s what we talked about at lunch yesterday, and I think you’re going to see the first rescission package come to the floor within the next three weeks.”

He noted the political support: “I haven’t talked to him directly, but I understand the president’s going to be very supportive.”

Crucially, Kennedy explained how rescission would solve the legal challenges DOGE was facing. “That will end the worry about all the lawsuits,” he said. “The tofu mob has filed all these lawsuits saying Musk doesn’t have the authority, only Congress does. Okay — let Congress do it.”

The rescission strategy was elegant in its simplicity. Rather than fighting court battles over whether DOGE had the executive authority to cut spending, Congress would simply pass legislation codifying the cuts. This moved the authority from the executive branch (legally contested) to the legislative branch (constitutionally unambiguous). The “tofu mob” lawsuits argued that only Congress could make spending decisions. Kennedy’s response: fine, Congress will make them.

The reference to his own experience with rescission authority added historical depth. “Way back when, when I was a young man working for Ronald Reagan in his budget office — I was assistant budget director, I was 12 years old, but we used rescission authority a lot,” Kennedy said. “It hasn’t been used. It’s a no-brainer.”

Social Security Death Records: Seven Years of Opposition

Kennedy described his long-running battle to implement what he characterized as the most obvious reform in government.

“When you die, your name goes to the Social Security Administration. They compile what’s called a death master file,” Kennedy explained. “But Social Security for years refused to share the list of dead people with anybody else in government, including the Department of Treasury.”

He described his bill: “I’ve got a bill to require them to do that and to share that list permanently with the Treasury Department and everybody else in the federal government who sends out checks, so we can stop sending checks to dead people.”

Kennedy expressed frustration at the pace of reform. “It’s not complicated. It triggers my gag reflex to think that it’s taken me seven years to get this done,” he said. “But I’ve had a lot of opposition.”

The revelation that Social Security had been refusing to share death records with other payment agencies for years — allowing checks to continue flowing to deceased individuals — was one of the most concrete examples of government dysfunction that DOGE had been exposing. The fix was technologically trivial: share a database. But institutional resistance and bureaucratic inertia had blocked even this basic reform for seven years.

Kennedy predicted the bill would finally move forward. “I think we’re going to move the bill here in the next few weeks,” he said.

Tariffs: “I’m Worried”

Kennedy offered his most candid assessment of the tariff policy, balancing support for Trump with genuine concern about uncertainty.

“I think President Trump on economics and otherwise is doing very well,” Kennedy said. “But you remember the old saying: the danger of rising high is that the air gets thin. I’m worried about the tariffs.”

He was careful to cite the first-term precedent. “I’m not saying that tariffs are going to cause inflation. President Trump did them in his first term and they didn’t,” Kennedy said.

But he acknowledged the unknown. “I’m saying that we just don’t know. We’re in very obscure territory. We’re in uncharted waters,” he told Kudlow.

Kennedy expressed confidence in Trump’s pragmatism. “I think if the tariffs do start to cause inflation, I think the president will back away from them,” he said.

He closed with another folksy formulation: “I’m not saying that I don’t trust President Trump, but there’s another saying: trust in God, but tie up your camel. If this starts causing inflation, we’re going to have to recalibrate.”

The “tie up your camel” analogy — derived from an Arabic proverb about combining faith with practical precaution — captured Kennedy’s position: full support for Trump’s agenda combined with the pragmatic recognition that untested policies in “uncharted waters” required contingency planning.

Key Takeaways

• Sen. Kennedy called Musk “a rock star” and said of DOGE critics: “The tofu crowd is mad, but when you trim fat, pigs squeal. That’s a law of nature.”
• He revealed that the first rescission package — making DOGE cuts permanent through congressional vote — would hit the Senate floor “within the next three weeks” after a lunch discussion with Musk.
• Kennedy said rescission would “end the worry about all the lawsuits” by having Congress exercise the spending authority that courts said DOGE lacked.
• His seven-year bill to force Social Security to share death records with other agencies was finally expected to move forward, ending checks to dead people.
• On tariffs, Kennedy said “I’m worried” but predicted Trump would “recalibrate” if they caused inflation, noting “we’re in uncharted waters.”