Remark Elon Musk’s Trump-blessed DOGE unit has made lots of noise and lots of headlines for its heavy-handed hatchet tactics inside supposedly bloated governmental organizations.

However its precise outcomes are up to now falling far in need of the Tesla tycoon’s unique guarantees.

Musk pledged to make use of his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, aka DOGE, to chop $2 trillion in federal spending, fraud, and waste when Trump elevated him to the pseudo-cabinet degree publish shortly after profitable re-election final yr. Uncle Sam spends about $7 trillion yearly.

The SpaceX oligarch later revised that focus on quantity all the way down to $1 trillion, and in a White Home cupboard assembly this month, the world’s richest man shared that he was “excited to announce” round $150 billion in financial savings for fiscal yr 2026, which for the federal authorities begins this coming October. 

That quantity is roughly echoed by a DOGE financial savings tracker, up to date weekly, that purports to indicate “estimated financial savings” of $155 billion up to now at time of writing – supposedly with receipts.

However these receipts appear to be a bit, properly, questionable. As quite a few outlets have reported, the info shared on DOGE’s web site has been riddled with errors, with inflated cuts, credit score claimed for contracts terminated years in the past, and claims of contract cancellations that gave the impression to be incorrect. 

Even when it had been unimpeachably correct, it is cry from the trillion-dollar goal Musk claimed he’d be capable to accomplish by the point his 130-day tenure as a particular authorities worker expired. 

Extra damningly, it is a blip in general authorities spending – round 2.2 % of the $6.8 trillion the Feds spent in 2024.

Talking of federal authorities spending … 

After which there’s the truth that the US authorities has already spent at the very least $135 billion extra this yr than it did in 2024, though at the very least a few of that spending was locked in earlier than Trump’s second time period started.

That knowledge comes courtesy of the Brookings Establishment’s Hamilton Venture, an financial analysis group, which maintains a real-time tally of federal authorities spending flowing from the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service to numerous different departments. 

As of April 15, the Trump administration has spent $2.334 trillion, whereas the Biden administration had solely notched $2.199 trillion in spending by the identical date in 2024 – not an enormous distinction on a graph, however lots of further money being doled out because the administration ostensibly tries to chop prices.

And the place, you might marvel, is that further spending coming from? Primarily based on our scroll by way of the varied outlay recipients obtainable within the graph, a piece of that further spending is coming from sources just like the Treasury Division’s judgements fund, the supply of presidency cash that will get paid out when the Feds lose a lawsuit, which up to now has doled out $1.5 billion in comparison with simply $430 million by the identical level final yr. 

There was additionally an enormous spike in “different farm service” funds from the US Division of Agriculture this month, with disbursements reaching $6.3 billion in comparison with $1.1 billion by April 15, 2024. 

There have been additionally appreciable, however proportionally smaller, will increase in spending on the Federal Emergency Administration Company, Division of Commerce (which has had its palms full justifying Trump’s tariffs), Division of the Inside, Division of Transportation, Small Enterprise Administration and extra. There’s even been a slight $5 billion enhance in federal worker salaries regardless of loads of jobs being eradicated so far in Trump’s time period. 

All these golf trips to Florida add to the invoice as properly.

No one ought to be too shocked by Musk’s missed objectives, because the South African-born American centibillionaire has a protracted historical past right here. In 2016, he mentioned he felt “pretty good about” a Tesla having the ability to drive itself coast to coast by 2017, and predicted SpaceX would launch a rocket to Mars in 2024. In 2019, he predicted there’d be one million so-called Tesla “robotaxis” on the highway by the tip of 2020. None of these issues have occurred but.

We have reached out to quite a lot of individuals, from the congressional DOGE caucus (sure, that is a real thing), to DOGE management and even Elon Musk, none of whom responded to questions. The White Home did reply, however solely to inform us that DOGE’s work had had huge outcomes and to not contact on the gulf between that $1 trillion promise and actuality. ®

There may be one factor working for DOGE

And it is knowledge. If its guarantees of chopping a trillion-plus bucks don’t work out, the unit has nonetheless managed to get its palms on a load of federal authorities data. In addition to the safety considerations of placing an excessive amount of data on residents, non-citizens, and organizations into the palms of some – compartmentalization is a factor – there’s additionally the query of battle of curiosity.

Musk runs companies that depend on contracts from the federal authorities and are regulated by the federal government – SpaceX and Tesla spring to thoughts – which is the very physique he was in a position to rifle by way of and choose packages and employees to chop from.

However again to the info; here is some current tales on DOGE’s entry to central data:

  • Workforce DOGE had entry to every kind of information at America’s high employment watchdog, a whistleblower has claimed, resulting in somebody apparently utilizing a Russian IP deal with to attach in remotely utilizing the proper credentials, with solely IT insurance policies blocking abroad logins stopping the try.
  • After some authorized backwards and forwards, DOGE has been allowed into the US Treasury IT atmosphere to a level. The operation additionally rocked up at America’s highway security regulator, the physique that oversees Musk’s Tesla empire.
  • In line with Democrats, Workforce DOGE reportedly poured inner knowledge into unvetted, unauthorized exterior AI programs to search for efficiencies and prices to chop.
  • DOGE aides also broke the Social Safety web site, it’s claimed.
  • Then there was that nonsense about tape storage.

In functioning democracies, we get the governments we elect as a inhabitants. That a lot is apparent. What is usually forgotten is that the governments we elect are alleged to work for us. Competence, deference to the legislation, and the liberty to scrutinize and criticize, at a minimal are required.

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