The target was $2 Trillion, the final claim $214 Billion (hugely exaggerated). Government spending rose.
DOGE Eat DOGE World
On November 25, The Wall Street Journal commented on the DOGE Eat DOGE World
The Department of Government Efficiency is officially disbanded—with eight months remaining in its mandate. The original vision of $2 trillion in cuts inspired awe. After the inauguration, the $2 trillion figure was replaced with $1 trillion.
In October, DOGE claimed to have saved American taxpayers $214 billion, or 5% to 10% of original estimates.
What Was Real Saving?
The Wall Street Journal did a miserable job of fact finding.
But I do give them credit for this accurate subtitle “Elon Musk and Donald Trump set out to shrink big government. They did not succeed.”
The New York Times did a much better time of parsing the results.
How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?
Please consider the New York Times report How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little? That’s a free link.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government — slashing billion-dollar contracts, canceling thousands of grants and pushing out civil servants.
But the group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up.
How is that possible?
One big reason, according to a New York Times analysis: Many of the largest savings that DOGE claimed turned out to be wrong. And while the group did make thousands of smaller cuts, jolting foreign aid recipients, American small businesses and local service providers, those amounted to little in the scale of the federal budget.
In DOGE’s published list of canceled contracts and grants, for instance, the 13 largest were all incorrect.
At the top were two Defense Department contracts, one for information technology, one for aircraft maintenance. Mr. Musk’s group listed them as “terminations,” and said their demise had saved taxpayers $7.9 billion. That was not true. The contracts are still alive and well, and those savings were an accounting mirage.
Together, those two false entries were bigger than 25,000 of DOGE’s other claims combined.
Of the 40 biggest claims on DOGE’s list, The Times found only 12 that appeared accurate — reflecting real reductions in what the government had committed to spend.
To sort DOGE’s bogus cuts from its successes, The Times looked at federal records for the 40 largest items on the “Wall of Receipts.” In at least 28 cases, DOGE got it wrong.
Its errors included:
- Double-counting. DOGE took credit for canceling the same Department of Energy grant twice, adding $500 million in duplicate savings.
- Timeline errors. One contract that DOGE claimed credit for ending had actually been terminated by the Biden administration, weeks before DOGE began its work. Three more items on DOGE’s list had simply expired. These were pandemic-era contracts with pharmacies that provided free Covid-19 testing for the uninsured. They were originally allowed to spend up to a combined $12.2 billion, but they never came close to that level. Then, in May, the three contracts ended on schedule.
- DOGE still claimed credit for killing them, highlighting $6 billion in savings.
- Misclassifications. Seven programs that DOGE claimed to have terminated are not dead, including four that were resurrected by court rulings.
- Exaggerations. In 16 cases, DOGE greatly exaggerated its cuts. Many, including those two large Defense Department contracts, relied on an accounting trick that produced “savings” with little real-world effect. DOGE lowered the official “ceiling value” of contracts — reducing the theoretical limit on what the government could eventually pay — without changing its actual spending.
On the day the list first appeared, the largest claim was an $8 billion Department of Homeland Security contract that was wrong by a factor of 1,000. The contract was worth only $8 million. That mistake and others were deleted after news reports revealed them.
The power to cut the federal budget was never truly in Mr. Musk’s hands — it belongs to Congress. And since the start of DOGE’s work, legislators have only once passed a law devoted to clawing back appropriated spending, defunding foreign aid and public broadcasting. In two mostly short-term spending bills, they have declined to make steep additional cuts.
A Chaotic Process
Many of the errors DOGE has left in its wall were rooted in the chaotic process of how it identified cuts — or told agencies to.
DOGE was staffed by outsiders from the business and tech worlds, without much experience in the arcana of government programs. The early approach to measure savings by subtracting spent money from ceiling values helped drive its choices, and its high error rate.
The DOGE wall shows that it canceled more than 1,000 I.M.L.S. grants to local museums, libraries and history centers. States and the American Library Association sued, and courts required the grants to be reinstated. The Baltimore museum later received most of its funds. And on Dec. 3, I.M.L.S. announced it was reinstating all grants. But those grants still appear as cuts on the DOGE website, collectively “saving” the government about $134 million.
In still other cases, DOGE claimed credit for canceling projects it never touched.
There’s more to the article including charts of alleged savings and what really happened.
The lead chart shows $35 billion or so in inaccurate claims.
Unfortunately the NYT never published a final estimate. But the purported $214 billion in savings is nonsense.
I asked Chrome AI “How much did DOGE really save?” Here’s the answer.
- DOGE’s Claimed Savings: The official DOGE website (doge.gov/savings) has listed a total of approximately $214 billion in estimated savings through a combination of contract cancellations, workforce reductions, and other changes
- Independent Estimates: Multiple reviews by news organizations (NPR, The New York Times, Politico) and budget experts have found that the documented, verifiable savings are far lower. Analyses suggest the actual savings from canceled contracts are closer to $2 billion to $7.3 billion, with one Politico analysis finding less than 5% of claimed contract savings were verifiable.
- Net Impact: Overall, some independent analyses have concluded that the costs associated with DOGE’s actions, such as lawsuits, rehiring, and lost productivity, may be greater than the cuts themselves, potentially resulting in a net cost to taxpayers in the long run.
- Ultimately, while DOGE has caused significant disruption and focused attention on government spending, independent experts widely agree that its claims are overstated and have not led to a meaningful decline in overall government spending, which has continued to rise.
Largest Peacetime Workforce Cut on Record
On the plus side CATO reports DOGE Produced the Largest Peacetime Workforce Cut on Record, but Spending Kept Rising
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) first set a goal to balance the budget by cutting $2 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse. This goal was later reduced to $1 trillion and then again to just $150 billion. DOGE also aimed to reduce the size and scope of the administrative state, improve the procurement process, reform regulations, eliminate certain small agencies, use technology to cut costs, and shrink the federal workforce. Cato scholars supported all these objectives. With DOGE now disbanded as a single entity, the main question is whether DOGE achieved its goals.
This analysis only focuses on federal outlays and employment. DOGE did not reduce spending, but it did reduce federal employment by nine percent in less than 10 months. A decline that large has not happened since the military demobilizations at the end of World War II and the Korean War.
Federal spending data are compiled by the Monthly Treasury Statements (MTS) published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. We focus exclusively on outlays, not budget authority, and on executive branch spending because that was DOGE’s jurisdiction. All dollar amounts are reported in 2021 dollars, adjusted using the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. Federal employment data are from the Current Employment Statistics, which are monthly job surveys run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly data on the number of federal jobs is available here from January 1939 to November 2025.
The federal government spent $7.6 trillion in the first 11 months of calendar year 2025, approximately $248 billion higher by November of 2025 compared to the same month in 2024 (Figure 1). Cumulative spending in every month of 2025 was greater than in every other year and was approximately as much as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in June 2024, or slightly less in real terms. There is no visible structural break in 2025 spending that coincides with DOGE’s start date. An observer who did not know when DOGE started could not identify it (figure 1 above).
It is important to note that DOGE’s target was to reduce the budget in absolute real terms without reference to a baseline projection. DOGE did not cut spending by either standard.
Although DOGE didn’t reduce outlays by November, it sizably cut federal employment by 271,000 (Figure 2). That’s a nine percent decline since January 2025.
It is not surprising that such a large reduction in the federal workforce did not lead to lower outlays, since most federal expenditures are transfer payments rather than salaries. According to Cato’s report to the DOGE Commission last year, a 10 percent cut in the federal workforce would only save about $40 billion annually. The 3.8 million federal defense and nondefense employees, excluding postal workers, account for around 8 percent of total spending.
It helps explain why reducing the workforce does not result in large savings. Additionally, the feds may hire contractors to fill some of the space vacated by former federal employees.
Elon Musk recently said that DOGE was only “a little bit successful” and that he wouldn’t do it again. The evidence supports Musk’s judgment. DOGE had no noticeable effect on the trajectory of spending, but it reduced federal employment at the fastest pace since President Carter, and likely even before.
DOGE did not reduce federal spending because most outlays are entitlement-driven and require congressional action, but it did help engineer the largest peacetime workforce reduction on record.
Every bit of that was understood (or should have been understood) from the very beginning.
I covered that several times.
Can DOGE Cut $2 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion?
On December 27, I asked the seemingly nonsensical question Can DOGE Cut $2 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion?
The answer to the first question is obvious. So let’s discuss what’s reasonable.
Unlike DOGE, I did balance the budget but it took some hard work.
I threw away Trump’s majorly expensive TCJA extension, cut military spending, and assumed a near miraculous $630 billion in DOGE cuts (or other revenue increases wherever DOGE failed).
Click above link for details.
January 10, 2025: Elon Musk Admits DOGE Can’t Find $2 Trillion In Budget Cuts
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that wasn’t possible. He won’t find $1 trillion either.
“I think we’ll try for $2 trillion, I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” Musk told Stagwell CEO Mark Penn during an X Spaces conversation. “If you try for $2 trillion you have a good shot at getting $1 [trillion]. So that, I think, would be an epic outcome.”
Yes, That Would Be Epic
The “new” epic outcome would require cutting $1 trillion out of $1 trillion in discretionary non-defense spending or cutting defense spending that Trump wants to dramatically increase.
Cutting $1 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion
Musk says that if we aim for $2 trillion we have a chance for $1 trillion. Why not aim for $6 trillion and settle for $3 trillion?
No matter. Let’s presume DOGE can cut $1 trillion by aiming for $2 trillion.
Voila! The entire non-discretionary non-military budget is now zero.
In normal circumstances it would have been amazing for anyone to believe such bullsheet.
But millions of people inflicted with Trump Worship Syndrome TWS believe anything.
And they still do.
Everyone talking about DOGE spending cuts but nobody is talking about DOGE additional costs . I remember, for instance, a good number of nuclear safety technicians fired from one day to another and then urgently re-hired due to their compelling job. What were the costs for such lack of personnel ? Did these young IT nerds “hired” by DOGE paid for that ? The result was that there was no systemic thinking, no consequences appraisal and only simple accounting. Rookies given too much power.
Disruption…
Sounds like the class clowns got a bunch of attention for doing nothing of substance.
The gold spray painted chainsaw reminds me of Trumps gold painted tennis shoes, rip-off gold spray painted bibles, and ultra-tacky gold ballroom.
Meanwhile, Trump busies himself with bankrupting our nation…
Observe the pattern!
The disruption did serve to distract the press from the gutting of the DOJ and Pentagons senior legal staff.
Any savings is good for the American people.
The Hill has reported that DOGE has saved about $55 billion in 2025.
Well Mister Mish at least there are DOGE-style efforts to expose gross waste and fraud like with Medicaid in Minnesota.
I see USAID budget under Biden for 2025 was around $70 billion, and the 2026 budget request is for $50 billion.
Also the FY 2025 deficit is $1.8 trillion compared to the 2024 deficit of $1.808 trillion. This is in part due to Trump cutting waste inherited from Biden.
Also this is the first time the deficit has decreased (when even accounting for inflation) since around 2001, and excluding the COVID fiscal years.
You are Trump posting as AD aren’t you.
Question. What part other than maybe the last sentence of what A D said is false?
And how about we do bring attention to the Somalia Waltz of $ 9 Billion?
Sure lets do an article on how DOGE was a failure but lets not do an article on the Somalia Fraud and its more than 1 agency to BTW and counting.
Deflect much?
Personally I thought DOGE was a good idea but it wasn’t implemented. It wound up as one of Donald and Musk’s con tricks, where nothing was as it appeared, and endless lies were told by the liar-in-chief and his sidekick who seems to have the same problem running his own businesses. It is all about the ANNOUNCEMENT, splashed all over the internet, the TV and front page of the newspapers. The media have very short memories and forget the ANNOUNCEMENT after 12 hours and move onto the next major Announcement. Trump is less a person and more a series of announcements.
The real thing DOGE accomplished has nothing to do with government spending. They did not do much there at all. As these articles say, that is in the hands of Congress. And Congress is composed 90+% of useless corrupt traitors
What DOGE DID illustrate is that the US Government is rotten to the core. Corrupt from top to bottom.
This is not fixable except by the ultimate crisis, which is coming
The Federal government does exactly what it has been doing forever. Protecting the upward flow of wealth to the elite, while carrying on a phony debate over governing philosophy between two corrupt parties. Don’t expect anything to get better until lobbying is illegal.
And Stocks are not allowed to be purchased.
So lets see here, the only thing that the government, the federal government is constitutionally supposed to be involved in, defense of the country, accounts for a little under $900Billion- the rest is something that was supposed to be left up to the “states to decide about being involved in, spending on”. So, we continue to operate unconstitutionally while our federal spending and bloat grows. There is nothing else to discuss here- it does not matter who is in office- we need to start unwinding D.C. and the federal involvement in things it was never tasked to do. Oh, and one of the other huge issues that costs the tax payers dearly are the number of agencies, which if I am not mistaken now number over 500 doing all sorts of things that have turned D.C. into what it is. All of this mind you, starting under FDR. Problem is when given the opportunity, Republican’s have not had the guts and or the brains to cut and to cut appropriately. Just pulling the plug sadly is not an option- 65 years ago it may have been an option, but we are way past that point now.
#TermLimitsNow #BalancedBudgetAmendment #EndTheFed
All great ideas. But Trump has to go first,
So lets all focus on Impeaching and Convicting him.
If the Dems and Repubs in Congress get together to do that, we have a chance to rebuild.
Impossible for two sides that approach all of this very differently to ever get together. The Dems are closer to weak kneed communists, have been for the better part of 70 years and Republican’s are nothing more than milktoast at this point.
Federal workers’ salaries are a small fraction of total spending. It’s a tiny little drop in a very, very big bucket.
If you want to cut big, then the only thing big enough to cut is military spending. But that will never happen. Quite the contrary. Spending on the endless wars keeps getting big hikes every year.
– If you want to cut big, then the only thing big enough to cut is military spending. But that will never happen.
> I agree 100%, and we have the Trump Administration planning on sending Ukraine (Giving!) Millions more of Our Taxpayer Dollars to Zelensky! Man Z must have some really good dirt on somebody high up…
The federal government spent about $600 billion in 2024 (and also in 2025) just on Medicaid.
They spent about $850 billion on the military and national defense in 2025.
DOGE was a “drain the swamp” action. It got many government employees to quit. It’s not a failure, but a start.
Don’t forget the many will eat the few in a not to distant future and you can take that to the bank……
By that time the bank will be bankrupt with all those balance sheet liabilities for commercial property when the collapse finally arrives.
Good points in actual savings it did provide, but unfortunately the start was the finish. We got Mid-Terms, Budgets, Inflation, Healthcare etc. to deal with. Toss in the Court Dates, Peace initiatives etc. and not much there for time left…
Good point, as I read about 7% (or around 155,000) of the federal civil service volunteered to leave such as early retirement.
Rough estimate is the average annual total compensation for them is around $120,000, so that is a savings of 155K x $120,000 or $18.6 billion.
Also Trump admin is telling the agencies to not fill the vacancies of these 155,000.
As an example,
Musk need to cut his car prices lower enough to compete with Chinese rivals.
The way I recall it, they found piles of wasteful garbage and fraud. But libs howled like monkeys and sued to protect every penny of the fraud.
Doge didnt fail – It was not allowed to succeed – there’s a difference
Excuses won’t fix the fearless jefe mess ….
I look at the $70 billion budget for USAID for 2025. Now I am reading the budget is $50 billion for USAID in 2026, so that tells me DOGE likely helped to identify some of the gross waste in USAID of the magnitude of $20 billion.
Just the federal government spends about $600 billion a year on Medicaid. That needs to be examined, and the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota is the tip of the iceberg.
Happy Christmas and a merry new year to all.
The little bit of success of DOGE still qualifies as significant in the context of the venal Swamp with which it contended. Only minimally backed by Trump and fully opposed by the Uniparty and all of officialdom, I give them credit for having cut any spending and govt “jobs” at all. Dislodging the profoundly corrupt USAID alone would have been unimaginable but for DOGE. DOGE “did help engineer the largest peacetime workforce reduction on record.”
Mish, I like all your prescriptions for lowering spending, etc. But I think the arrogant attitude you adopt towards DOGE is unwarranted. Anyone attempting to advance your excellent prescriptions would be instantly rendered a nonentity by the corrupt cancerous organism that is Washington, DC.
Trump’s dropping support for DOGE (and the Republican leadership never giving a scintilla of support) was a meaningful sign that Trump’s “drain the Swamp” promise was a lie.
SAID, Though a bit flawed.
Mish is enamored of anything his TDS Orange Man Bad infested few little Grey Cells can even remotely try to correlate, all in an attempt to try and make senile Joey B and that certain person pushing the climate change hoax who bought a mansion in MA by the seashore appear compassionate.
“Dislodging the profoundly corrupt USAID alone would have been unimaginable but for DOGE.”
The enemy of my enemy is my friend…
Well said
My understanding is that while some USAID programs were shut down, the rest was moved under the purview of Marco Rubio (who is neck and neck right now with Lindsay Graham for neocon of the year) who will conveniently ensure these really stay away from public scrutiny.
Reporting as well as figures released by Rubio state that 83% of USAID was shut down and the rest moved under Rubio. I don’t trust Rubio either. But I don’t see anyone disputing that of 6200 USAID programs, only 1000 survive within the State Department and 5200 have been cancelled. Given the character of the Swamp, that is no small feat!
Based on taco’s records and bragging, this was one of the most successful programs by the deranged dictator.
I’m grateful for any cuts, especially if it impacted the swamp’s slush funds. Nearly everyone was against DOGE’s ideals of cost cutting, sunlight disinfectant, and good stewardship of taxpayer money; unscrupulous NGOs, warmongers, imperialists, globalists, lobbyists, grifters, foreign interests, marxists, Beltway bandits, and many other thieves. You could tell DOGE was doing good work just by their opposition’s seething.
A competent version of DOGE or something similar is desperately needed. Sadly, Trump has a shorter attention span than a 3 year old.
One of the other issues with DOGE is that they cancelled a number of government system modernization contracts. This shows up as immediate savings but in the long term it’s going to cost a lot more in lost efficiency and productivity.
DOGE was fiscal vandalism at its best. In the meantime, the US fiscal time bomb is ticking away.
Insufficient vandalism. It’s hard to get excited about a few billion when Trump immediately signs the biggest “defense” budget ever.
The only thing it did was dismantle an aid agency that worked with the world’s poorest nations.
On USAID, the richest man in the world managed to kill some of the poorest children in the world. I assume that counts as a major achievement in DOGE land.
A 10% reduction in the federal workforce is substantial and unprecedented. This reduction in the workforce will result in substantial reductions in federal spending over time including unfunded retirement benefits.
I do not understand why you do not give credit for substantial reductions in government spending implemented by Trump and the Republican Congress. These unprecedented reductions have occurred despite fierce Democrat resistance. The elimination of extended Obamacare subsidies is large. These subsidies would have grown massively over time. Trump is eliminating public benefits to many legal immigrants, another large reduction over time. Trump and Congress eliminated the massive subsidies in the Democrat green energy bill. Trump’s interior immigration enforcement will reduce future outlays for public benefits by large amounts over time. Trump’s closure of the southern border will eliminate large future outlays for public benefits over time. Trump/Congress reduced some wasteful Medicaid spending in the BBB. Trump is trying to share data among the IRS and other agencies to reduce massive fraud in refundable tax credits.
Think about the alternative if Democrats controlled government. Only 2 Democrat senators prevented even more massive Democrat spending in 2022. Democrats have many more entitlement programs such child care funded by federal money. They have a huge laundry list of entitlement spending items (vote buying) that they would enact if given control of government.
What are we at 2 trillion deficit in his second term, building a massive half billion dollar ballroom and battleships for last century’s wars?
Trump spends and steals faster than the democrats could imagine until he showed them.
Not true. Trump/Republicans spend more on defense. Homeland Security received a large increase to enforce immigration laws.
Democrats want major new entitlement programs increases to entitlement programs including health care, child care, immigrant services, SS increases, green energy, and many more. Please review the Democrat spending initiatives during Biden’s first two years. Democrats opposed every spending reduction in the BBB and budget process especially extended Obamacare subsidies and aid for immigrants. Democrats also want massive tax increases on a small part of the population to provide the illusion of a free lunch for massive spending increases.
Here we go with yet another libtard and their ballroom ignorance….
Ballroom is private money, wizard
The White House has been called the “People’s House”. The people should have been consulted before massive changes were made.
Wrong, Trump spends less on Democrat programs like he is trying to reform Medicaid which is around $600 billion per year, and as you noticed in Democrat sh&thole states like Minnesota, Medicaid fraud is common.
Any comment on the 9 Billion fed money lost to MN and Somalia Waltz?????
We won’t hold our breath
The issue is not the reduction in the Federal workforce. As a concept it’s probably overdue. It’s in how it was done… in a chaotic, inept, chainsaw approach rather than a well thought out process. For an example of how to do it correctly see Gore and Clinton’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government program carried out back in the 1990s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government
Oh, and to add to the above since you said “A 10% reduction in the federal workforce is substantial and unprecedented.”
The program I mentioned above eliminated more than 10% of the civilian Federal workforce.
It was carried out by Democrats.
Most of the reduction was defense related during the cold war dividend. The cold war dividend was a one-time event. Democrats did not make any meaningful reductions to government especially their zeal for massive new entitlement programs.
You need to revisit Schumer and Hillary et al comments on illegal aliens from the 90’s, amongst other Demo-gems that haven’t aged too well for them.
Much of it because Newt Gingrich and the Republicans were on board. There is ZERO Democrats on board with a Trump cut. Not one ounce of anything other than #resist. We are 30 years from the political climate you mention.
Said the government parasite
Well said.
You are correct. However, taking the standard Washington DC approach to any type of budget cutting would have introduced years long delays that in the end, would not have accomplished very much, as such efforts did in the past.
Sometimes you just got to get the chainsaw out and start cutting.
I just ran this a super-secret decoder that tells us what really happened:
“Trump is trying to share data among the IRS and other agencies to reduce massive fraud in refundable tax credits.”
Decoded: “Trump is fulfilling a deep state wet dream to exfiltrate previously protected data which will be fed into Stargate and used to improve blackmail/targeting operations”