Billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump tried to take a chainsaw to federal government spending, but it turns out they actually wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The Department of Government Efficiency generated some $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government in the first six months of the year, according to a new report from the minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).
The report, spearheaded by Democratic Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal, comes after a months-long investigation into the tech billionaire and his team’s DOGE efforts after the president tapped the tech billionaire to lead the short-lived initiative to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” and find some $2 trillion in government savings by July 2026.
However, Musk, once “first buddy,” departed his role as a Trump adviser in May, far short of the DOGE’s goal before having a colossal public breakup with the president, as congressional Republicans backed by Trump passed legislation that is projected to further expand the deficit and add trillions to the national debt.
The massive sum of DOGE-generated waste found in the report also happens to be more than twice the $9 billion in DOGE cuts Congress codified earlier this month in the rescissions package sent over by the White House to claw back federal funds, which took an ax to public broadcasting and foreign aid.
In its effort to put together the report, Blumenthal’s team reviewed publicly available resources and analysis to come up with the whopping sum of DOGE waste.
It found that one of the biggest examples where DOGE burned taxpayer dollars was with its Deferred Resignation Program, which was announced in late January by the Office of Personnel Management. In total, the chaotic program wasted some $14.8 billion by paying some 200,000 federal employees not to work for up to eight months.
The 55-page report also found more than $6 billion in waste from the more than 100,000 federal employees who were involuntarily separated from their government jobs but faced long periods of administrative leave. Many were paid not to work for weeks or months.
There was also some $263 million in lost interest and fees to the federal government after the Department of Energy implemented dozens of loan freezes for utility projects.
Another $155 million was wasted in time costs for employees because of Musk’s demand that they send a weekly accomplishments email to OMB highlighting five accomplishments. The move announced in February caused widespread confusion at agencies across the federal government when it was announced in February along with the threat from the world’s richest person that it would be taken as a resignation for those who didn’t respond.
DOGE also wasted $110 million in food and medical supply aid that was left to spoil in warehouses and set to be destroyed.
Nearly $42 million was spent to relocate staff members from one agency closer to a physical office, $38 million in investments were blown on four projects at the National Institutes of Health and the IRS, and some $66 million was spent on professional staff to be underutilized for entry-level work.
“This report is a searing indictment of DOGE’s false claims,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “As my PSI investigation has shown, DOGE was clearly never about efficiency or saving the American taxpayer money.”
The total waste found also included an estimated $50 million in DOGE operational costs. However, it did not include other potential ways money was spent or wasted, such as being used for legal and administrative expenses or undermining public safety.
The Connecticut senator has urged the inspectors general of some 27 government agencies to take up the investigation and conduct reviews of how DOGE’s actions cost taxpayers.
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