In February 2025, when DOGE was firing federal workers faster than courts could rule on it, Indiana's television stations went looking for reaction from the state's members of Congress.
Erin Houchin gave them a clean quote.
"Bureaucrats in Washington are now making decisions that they've never been elected to make; DOGE is uncovering some of this."
That's what she told Fox59, which noted that several members of Indiana's delegation "said they stand behind DOGE's mission full stop."
Not all of them did. In the same story, fellow Indiana Republican Jefferson Shreve said he had questions about DOGE's approach and its pace: "People that give their service to our government at any level need to be communicated with fairly, timely, in a reasonable fashion."
Houchin went the other way. On February 13, 2025, she appeared on NewsNation's Morning in America to make the case that DOGE was "a threat to bureaucracy, not democracy" — the line the network put in the headline.
Her vote is the reason the cuts happened
On June 12, 2025, the House took up H.R. 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025 — the bill cancelling $9.4 billion Congress had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting.
Houchin voted yes. In a two-vote margin, every yes is the deciding one.
Two days later she posted about it, celebrating that the House had "passed the first round of DOGE rescissions—cutting $9.4 billion in reckless, unnecessary spending", and singling out the cuts to USAID for praise.
When the Senate sent it back, the House needed one more vote to finish the job. On July 18, 2025, H.Res. 590 passed 216–213 — a rule written so that agreeing to it also sent the cuts to the president's desk. Houchin voted aye on that too.
What "reckless, unnecessary spending" meant in Bloomington
Bloomington is the largest city in Houchin's district. It is home to Indiana University, and to Indiana Public Media — WFIU radio and WTIU television.
Those stations lost about $1.33 million a year in federal funding, roughly 11% of their budget, when the money Houchin voted to cancel disappeared and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began winding down. That came on top of about $450,000 a year in state funding that had already been eliminated.
On May 16, 2026, Indiana Public Media announced it was laying off 18 people — 4 full-time and 14 part-time — effective July 15. It also outsourced its master control operations. "Like many public media organizations across the country, we are facing a significant financial challenge that requires us to adjust how we operate," executive director Mike Arnold wrote to staff.
Across Indiana, the same reporting put the federal cut to public stations statewide at about $13 million.
This is the recurring shape of the rescissions vote: the member votes for a number in Washington, and a station in their own district finds out what the number meant. In Michigan, John Moolenaar called defunding public radio "a win for the American people" — and WCMU, licensed to a university in his district and serving 42 rural counties, lost 19% of its budget.
Then DOGE just ended
DOGE's charter expired on July 4, 2026.
There was no final report. No accounting. Nobody at the White House would say clearly whether it had officially folded. Elon Musk, who promised at a 2024 rally that DOGE would cut "at least $2 trillion," was long gone. The final claim was $215 billion — about 3% of annual federal spending — and even that number never held up: the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service estimated that in fiscal 2025 alone, the paid leave, the rehiring of mistakenly fired workers, and the lost productivity DOGE caused would cost taxpayers $135 billion. Federal spending went up. We wrote the obituary here.
So the ledger on Houchin's position reads like this. The thing she defended on national television as a threat to bureaucracy rather than democracy produced no report, no verified savings, and a $9.4 billion cut that took $1.33 million a year and 18 jobs out of the public media operation in her own largest city.
The rest of the bill she voted for
Houchin has been in Congress since 2023 and sits on the Rules, Budget, and Energy and Commerce committees — three of the places where a member has real leverage over what the House does.
She used that position to vote for the 2025 budget bill as well. In her district, an estimated 22,748 people are projected to lose health coverage as a result — 11,748 from Medicaid and 11,000 from the Affordable Care Act — according to the Joint Economic Committee.
When Hoosiers wanted to ask her about any of it, they had to improvise. In April 2025, after she paused some of her regular office hours in Bedford, the Indiana Democratic Party held a town hall for her in Bloomington with an empty chair and a sign bearing her name. About 80 people came. Her office never answered the invitation.
DOGE is gone. The people it cost their jobs are still here.
Sources
Houchin's DOGE comments come from Fox59 (February 2025) and NewsNation's Morning in America (February 13, 2025), both linked above. The votes are public record on the House Clerk's site — Roll Call 168 and Roll Call 203, also linked above. The Indiana Public Media layoffs were reported by the Indiana Daily Student on May 16, 2026. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
