Three months after being formed, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may not be living up to its name, according to The New York Times.
The agency, created via executive order by President Donald Trump in January, has been tasked with slashing the federal budget and wiping out alleged “fraud, waste, and abuse.” However, as DOGE head Elon Musk prepares to depart Washington and step back from the agency, the Times reports the alleged “savings” created by DOGE are minimal.
As of Monday, the DOGE website claims it has saved an estimated $160 billion through “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.” That number is far less than the $2 trillion in savings Musk originally claimed he could find and lower than the $1 trillion in savings he offered after backtracking on his original figure.
Earlier this month, Musk admitted in a cabinet meeting with Trump that DOGE is likely to report savings of $150 billion for next year’s fiscal budget.
But according to a study by the Partnership for Public Service, the cost of actually making those cuts came in around $135 billion for this fiscal year. The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit organization that studies federal workforce. The organization used “budget figures to produce a rough estimate” regarding the costs of all the firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers caused by the DOGE cuts.
Along with those costs, cuts at the Internal Revenue Service that led to 22,000 employees leaving will cost the agency an estimated $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. Combined with the $135 billion in other costs and it appears the cost of DOGE’s cuts comes in around $143.5 billion.
That total does not include the costs associated with the numerous lawsuits that have been filed in response to DOGE’s actions, which also cost the government time and money.
“It’s important to realize that doing nothing has a cost, too, and these so-called experts and groups are conveniently absent when looking at the costs of doing nothing,” White House spokesperson Harrison W. Fields told the Times.
DOGE’s cuts are also expected to be less costly in the coming years as up-front costs may be more than future costs.
While Musk continues to tout DOGE’s efforts, the value of the reported savings have been questioned. The New York Times previously reported that one claimed savings involved DOGE cancelling a contract that didn’t exist. The “contract” was actually a proposal that had not been finalized, but the agency reported it as a savings of more than $300 million, according to the Times.
DOGE also claimed credit for a canceled contract that was actually canceled when former President Joe Biden was in office. A reported $1.75 billion grant for a vaccine nonprofit was canceled and listed as a savings, but the nonprofit reported that it had already been paid in full, meaning the savings were $0.
Musk is expected to end his time as a special government employee next month as he is only permitted to work for 130 days in the role.