Elon Musk once pledged that his Department of Government Efficiency would find $1 trillion in savings in the federal budget by Sept. 30, the date the government closes its books on the fiscal year.
That date has now come and gone, Mr. Musk has long since left Washington, and DOGE never came close to cutting as much money as he promised. But because its work has been obscured by crude accounting and White House maneuvers, it’s impossible to know how much DOGE and its allies actually did cut from the budget — or even what happened to that money.
Outside budget experts can’t nail down a number. Even congressional appropriators — the people who decide how federal funds should be spent in the first place — don’t know. And the public may never have a clear answer.
This conclusion is an undercurrent of the Democrats’ government shutdown fight: Congress and the public simply can’t follow what the Trump administration has done with federal spending. And now the fiscal year is over, with untold sums unaccounted for.
“The fact that Congress, who constitutionally has the power of the purse, can’t figure out what’s been going on is a deep, deep, deep constitutional issue,” said Zach Moller, director of the economic program at the center-left think tank Third Way.
Funding that Congress intended to be spent by Sept. 30 seemingly never was. Some of it may have expired at midnight that day, in direct opposition to Congress’s will. In the mystery over what happened to it — and how much money is at stake — Congress has been losing more of its power.
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