Elon Musk's highly publicised campaign to slash US government waste with his symbolic 'chainsaw for bureaucracy' has failed to make a meaningful cut, with federal spending rising despite the effort. A damning New York Times investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk led, found its claimed savings were largely illusory.
DOGE's Dubious Savings Claims Exposed
The report, released this week, scrutinised the contract cancellations touted by DOGE at the start of Donald Trump's term. It found the department's dashboard grossly mischaracterised its achievements. Of the top 13 cancellations listed, all 13 were incorrect. From the top 40, 28 were deemed inaccurate.
One Department of Energy contract worth $500 million was bizarrely counted as cancelled twice. Many other programmes were already winding down in the final weeks of the Biden administration or had simply expired, yet DOGE still claimed them as wins. Perhaps most tellingly, 80 percent of the claimed cancellations saved $1 million or less—a mere rounding error in a multi-trillion dollar budget.
Legal Challenges and Unmet Targets
Other cost-cutting attempts faced immediate legal hurdles. DOGE axed over 1,000 grants to local museums, libraries, and history centres from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, claiming a $134 million saving. However, a court reinstated them. Despite this ruling on 3rd December, DOGE's 'wall of wins' dashboard, last updated nearly two months prior, continued to tout the saving.
Lease cancellations for government office space, another pillar of DOGE's strategy, also fell short. Analysis by commercial real estate firm CoStar Group found the administration was set to miss its target significantly. While 250 cancellations saved $112 million annually, this was a far cry from the $730 million once touted by a Government Services Administration employee.
The Bottom Line: Spending Rose
The ultimate result was a rise in overall expenditure. Federal spending increased from roughly $6.95 trillion in fiscal 2024 to approximately $7.01 trillion in fiscal 2025. This occurred even though DOGE claimed to have cancelled more contracts than were cut in Biden's final year.
The most expensive government programmes—Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and debt interest payments—remained untouched. One major cut that did stick was the elimination of the entire U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). However, its $21.7 billion spend in 2024 constituted just 0.3% of the total federal budget.
Musk, who left his government role in late May to return to the private sector, offered a mixed review of his tenure. In a recent interview with Katie Miller, a former DOGE leader and wife of Trump aide Stephen Miller, he called his time "a little bit successful," stating they stopped "a lot of funding that really just made no sense." Yet, he admitted he wouldn't take the role again, saying he would have preferred to focus on his companies.
When challenged on the report's findings, a current Trump administration official did not directly address them, instead reiterating that "President Trump pledged to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse in our bloated government."
