Elon Musk took a chainsaw to federal bureaucracy in the name of slashing down government spending—but he seems to have achieved the complete opposite of his goal instead.
With the clock ticking on his DOGE tenure, Musk and his goons have only saved the government an estimated $160 billion, which accounts for a mere 8 percent of his projected $2 trillion in savings. On top of that, the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that government spending has actually gone up.
Kent Smetters, director of the model that tracks weekly Treasury data, told Politico that total spending climbed by 6.3 percent or $156 billion since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, compared to the first four months of 2024.
Even when accounting for inflation, the government still spent $81.2 billion more under Trump compared to the same period last year, Smetters added.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Politico that Trump had a “mandate” to “uproot” waste, fraud, and abuse: “This isn’t easy to do in a broken system entrenched in bureaucracy and bloat, but it’s a task long overdue.”
In a January interview on his platform X, Musk described government spending as “a very target-rich environment for saving money.”
“If you look at any direction, it’s like, ‘Where will you find places to save money?’ I’m like, ‘It’s like being in a room full of targets. You could close your eyes and you can’t miss,” he said with a chuckle. “There’s just a lot of waste in government.”
But it looks like it’s possible to miss after all.
Musk claimed in Trump’s campaign rally last October that he would be able to save the government “at least $2 trillion.”
Just three months later, in his X interview, Musk appeared to cut his savings goal by half: “I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting one [trillion].”
A good chunk of the savings that DOGE has delivered thus far has come at the expense of federal workers. A Politico analysis found that nearly 250,000 employees have left or are expected to leave the government, including over 112,000 who took the deferred resignation program.
One crucial figure that DOGE’s questionable calculations have failed to account for, however, is the cost of firing staff, then rehiring them after a court ordered their reinstatement, lost productivity, and paid leaves.
All of those costs add up to about $135 billion, according to Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that tracks the federal workforce. These estimates, which were based on budget figures, do not include the cost of DOGE’s numerous legal battles over its sweeping cuts.
“Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating,” Max Stier, the nonprofit’s chief executive, told The New York Times. “He’s inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come.”
While Musk is still involved in DOGE activities, he is no longer running business from the White House, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told the New York Post Tuesday.
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