The reported disbanding of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—eight months before the end of its scheduled term—is perhaps the entity’s only true conservative accomplishment. By having its activities subsumed into the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), DOGE has at least shown that the Trump administration can eliminate a wasteful and ineffective government program. Earlier this year, DOGE tore through the federal government like a hurricane, with director Elon Musk promising to “move fast and break things” like a Silicon Valley disruptor. However, Musk’s exit in late May starved DOGE of the Trump support and MAGA voter credibility it needed to steamroll federal agencies and even Cabinet officials. The remaining remnant of tech bros simply lacked the needed expertise and institutional support to become a true power center to rival OMB.
DOGE fell victim to the absurdly unrealistic standards set by its leaders. Elon Musk originally pledged that his administrative actions to slash government waste could immediately save $2 trillion out of a $7 trillion federal budget. As Musk familiarized himself with basic federal budgeting, he quickly reduced his target to $1 trillion and then $150 billion. These ambitious goals reflected the long-held conservative fantasy that budget deficits are driven primarily by obvious waste, fraud, and abuse that any competent business leader could simply zero out, saving trillions of dollars. When that simplistic narrative was revealed to be false, conservatives such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blamed the Washington, D.C., establishment (“the swamp”) for aggressively sabotaging DOGE. In reality, DOGE was fatally flawed from the beginning. Its premise of trillions of dollars in easily cuttable waste was nonsensical, and DOGE further limited its own effectiveness through incompetence and attempts to bypass Congress illegally. DOGE’s failure was entirely predictable to anyone with a baseline understanding of the federal budget, public administration, or basic politics.
DOGE saved little money.
While DOGE never came close to saving even the latest target of $150 billion, its precise savings may never be known because it is impossible to measure exactly which spending was canceled, how much would have been spent otherwise, and how much of the canceled spending was reprogrammed into other uses. On a macro level, total federal spending rose by $275 billion in 2025, which was $18 billion below the level projected by the Congressional Budget Office. This $18 billion difference is not necessarily policy-based, as it is also within the margin to be expected from slight changes in economic or technical factors.
Treasury’s monthly budget breakdowns reveal that spending on the State Department and international assistance programs fell by $12 billion in the second half of FY 2025 (which ended September 30), while spending on public health, education, and other targeted programs did not show notable declines across the year. That $12 billion mostly overlaps with the $9 billion rescission savings bill signed by President Donald Trump plus $5 billion that the administration refused to spend in a “pocket rescission.” Moving forward, the reported reduction in the number of federal civilian employees from 2.4 million to 2.1 million may save as much as $40 billion annually. But even that figure assumes that none of the eliminated federal jobs are restored or replaced by contractors. Finally, DOGE may ultimately lose money when including the tax revenues lost from fewer audits and more tax evasion as a result of IRS staff layoffs. Whatever final savings figure emerges will be far less than the trillions originally promised.
DOGE was conceptually flawed.
The promise to save trillions of dollars was ultimately doomed by the reality that most federal spending was off limits to DOGE. Roughly two-thirds of all federal spending goes to five items (Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest) that Trump either promised not to cut, or in the case of interest, cannot directly reduce. Attempts by DOGE to scale back Social Security customer service spending as well as assistance at veterans’ hospitals were largely abandoned in the face of a steep backlash. Even much of the remaining one-third of federal spending consists of programs that Trump voters generally support, such as infrastructure, border security, farm subsidies, and law enforcement. Ultimately, DOGE was left to slash cultural totems that benefit MAGA enemies: aid to Africa, DEI contracts, Politico subscriptions, and government employees. And while the potential savings from these expenditures look like a lot of money for a typical family, they represent budget dust in the context of a $7 trillion federal budget.
Because real waste exists in the federal budget, DOGE represents a colossal missed opportunity. After all, Washington has a moral obligation to eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending in order to minimize the necessary cuts to priority programs. OMB estimates that $191 billion annually is lost to payment errors, which overwhelmingly take place within Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and earned income tax credit payments. Moreover, Washington is plagued with dozens of overlapping programs in areas such as education, economic development, and job training. And the Defense Department has a long record of losing tens of billions of dollars in contract cost overruns.
These examples of wasteful spending are easy to identify yet quite difficult to fix. Cleaning up such waste often involves completely overhauling countless government computer systems, developing new oversight controls (without unduly paralyzing the distribution of legitimate benefits), and coordinating with state governments that share in the administration of key programs. Overhauling these practices across hundreds of federal programs is tedious, complicated, and thankless—which is why it occurs so rarely. Lawmakers will hold hearings and press conferences blasting government waste, yet few are willing to invest significant resources into, for example, reducing Medicaid payment errors. DOGE could have focused on such activities—especially given its leaders’ background in computing technology—yet it seemed to lack the required attention span. Trump and Musk instead prioritized headline-grabbing gimmicks such as demanding a war on “millions” of fraudulent Social Security payments that did not actually exist.
DOGE was incompetent.
While there are clear limits to how much federal spending can be saved by cutting waste, DOGE undermined itself with sheer incompetence. Musk ran DOGE as though all it takes is some Silicon Valley experts to triumphantly show up, “break things,” fire people, and zero out major accounts like he did when he purchased Twitter. The problem is that the federal government—a $7 trillion entity with millions of employees serving 330 million citizens—is unfathomably more complicated than a tech company. Instead of a board of directors, DOGE is accountable to Congress, the courts, existing statutes, and the entire electorate. Moreover, “breaking things” at Twitter may mean that the search tool malfunctions or direct messages do not go through. Yet breaking things in the federal government can result in Social Security checks not going out, a compromised nuclear arsenal, and crumbling infrastructure.
Nevertheless, a serious attempt to cut government waste would have tapped into the existing industry of experts such as economists, public administrators, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), congressional oversight committees, inspectors general (IGs), and think tanks that have been building reform blueprints for decades. Instead, nearly all of these experts were ignored—and many of the IGs even fired—based on the absurd idea that nearly anyone who had developed expertise on federal programs must be part of “the swamp” that caused the federal government to grow out of control. Obviously, this framework conflates lawmakers voting to expand government with outside critics impatiently waiting for anyone in power to adopt their detailed blueprints to eliminate waste. The idea that the Cato Institute or the GAO cannot be trusted to help cut waste is bizarre and self-defeating.
With virtually all experts dismissed, the task of government reform fell on Musk and his team of business colleagues, some of whom were barely out of college and often brought zero public administration experience or expertise to the agencies they were dismantling. The resulting gaffes were at times infuriating and hilarious. This included claiming more than $200 billion in savings with a database that confused “millions” for “billions,” triple-counted the same savings, included long-expired expenditures, and counted savings from spending that was never scheduled to occur. DOGE accidentally fired and then rehired bird flu trackers and top-clearance nuclear weapons workers. It reportedly tried to delete the word “equity” from an IRS employee handbook because it confused the economic term for a DEI reference. Musk evidently misread a Social Security database to assume payments were being made to millions of dead recipients, and his team misread a federal grant to claim that the U.S. sent Gaza 1.5 billion condoms at a cost of $50 million. DOGE falsely attacked USAID as a money-laundering operation that provided only pennies on the dollar to the intended recipients. An executive order freezing federal grants and loans was quickly blocked by the courts, and Musk’s demand that countless federal employees email to DOGE a job justification within 48 hours or be fired had to be quickly rescinded.
Cutting government waste is difficult enough for seasoned policy and administrative experts. It is virtually impossible for a group of unqualified individuals who are wildly out of their depth.
DOGE was often illegal.
Finally, DOGE was destined to fail because many of its ambitions were illegal and even unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 further clarifies that the executive branch cannot unilaterally cancel spending authority that had been passed by Congress and signed into law by the president. So while DOGE could legally reprogram government grants and contracts or undertake administrative reforms, it was legally forbidden from eliminating government programs, or altering an agency’s spending authority. Such reforms required new legislation, such as the $9 billion rescission bill enacted into law that codified what may be the only lasting DOGE savings.
Meanwhile, Musk was given extraordinary authority despite no Senate confirmation, no legal oversight, no official clearance to access Americans’ confidential financial data, and several business conflicts of interest. Clear illegalities included OMB illegally impounding federal spending authority and illegally concealing the evidence from Congress. Courts have also ruled that some grants and contracts were illegally canceled due to viewpoint discrimination rather than competence or congressional will.
Ultimately, deeply slashing federal spending requires going through the legislative process. And while MAGA voters often claim that congressional gridlock left no alternative to DOGE’s illegal overreach, such statements are fundamentally undemocratic. If the American people prioritize a government that focuses on reducing spending, it is free to elect candidates promising such reforms. Failing to elect and build a legislative majority supporting one’s reform agenda is undoubtedly frustrating, yet no excuse to subvert the democratic will of the people.
Were savings really the goal?
By any measure, DOGE failed to significantly reduce government spending. But perhaps cutting spending was never the real goal. After all, Elon Musk put himself in a position to potentially access taxpayer information and proprietary government software, as well as to expand his government contracts and hurt competitors. The Trump White House was able to fire “disloyal” federal employees and thus motivate remaining employees to prioritize loyalty to Trump over the impartial application of federal laws.
The MAGA voter base was treated to the “liberal tears” of defunding HIV medicine for poor African children, sending government employees to the unemployment office, and defunding grants and contracts that largely benefited minorities. Finally, DOGE attracted swarms of attention from the political media and offered the illusion of fiscal responsibility, leaving less public oversight of a Republican Congress passing tax cut legislation to add $5 trillion to the national debt over the decade. Ultimately, Elon Musk, elected Republicans, and MAGA voters all reaped benefits that were independent of DOGE actually saving much money.
No easy budget shortcuts.
DOGE has provided yet more evidence that there are no easy shortcuts to dramatically decreasing federal spending. The Republican fiscal contradiction is that many of its voters demand that Washington impose massive reductions in total spending while also shielding Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans’ benefits, infrastructure, farm subsidies, border security, and (increasingly) the safety net from the budget axe. These voters have tried to resolve this contradiction by asserting that most federal spending actually goes to “waste, fraud, and abuse,” immigrants, foreign aid, or “woke programs.” And Republican lawmakers have played into this myth by proposing broad fiscal targets such as balancing the budget within a decade, the “Penny Plan,” or the Balanced Budget Amendment without specifying the steep cuts to popular programs necessary to meet those ambitious targets.
Washington does not face a $1.8 trillion budget deficit heading to $4 trillion within a decade because some “deep state” cabal refuses to eliminate government waste. Rather, the unsustainable budget deficit projections are overwhelmingly driven by surging Social Security and Medicare shortfalls that result from 74 million baby boomers, expanded benefits, and rising health care costs. Voters can either curtail these retirement benefits, eviscerate nearly all other spending such as defense, the safety net, and veterans’ benefits, or accept a significantly higher tax burden. This inescapable mathematical reality cannot be averted by a fast-talking president or celebrity CEO. Sure, a war on government waste would be a welcome way to save perhaps $100 billion to $200 billion annually. Yet that effort will require expertise, patience, upfront investments, and true buy-in from Congress, federal agencies, and outside policy experts. Unfortunately, the DOGE fiasco suggests that too many Americans still cling to the hope that lazy gimmicks will avert the need to align the government we demand with the taxes we are willing to pay.
