Federal spending went up under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the exact opposite of its mission.
A new report from the New York Times found that federal spending actually went up under DOGE. In fiscal year 2025, the federal government spent $7.01 trillion, while in fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent $6.95 trillion, according to data from the Treasury.
FY25 began Oct. 1, 2024 and ended Sept. 30 of this year, meaning Trump was president for the majority of the time period that saw the spending increase. Musk began his DOGE project in January under an executive order Trump signed on his Inauguration Day.
While DOGE claimed it “made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government — slashing billion-dollar contracts, canceling thousands of grants and pushing out civil servants,” the Times found that most of what DOGE said it cut was incorrect.
DOGE had published a list of canceled contracts and grants, but the largest 13 were incorrect.
The top two contracts were with the Department of Defense, which Musk claimed had been “terminated” and had saved taxpayers $7.9 billion. In reality, the Defense Department still has those contracts, according to the outlet.
The Times also found that only 12 of DOGE’s top 40 largest claims were accurate. DOGE also made several inaccurate claims about what it cut, including double-counting cuts, including contracts cut during the Biden administration, and exaggerating its cuts.
Additionally, four of the contracts that DOGE said it had cut had been reinstated by courts, the outlet reported.
Musk had originally claimed his DOGE project would save the U.S. $2 trillion, but later cut that figure in half, claiming it would only save $1 trillion. Towards the end of DOGE’s time in the Trump White House, Musk claimed DOGE cut $150 billion in federal spending, but did not provide details.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.
DOGE and Musk came out swinging in the early days of Trump’s second presidency, literally and figuratively.
The project, however, faced legal setbacks, and Musk was largely unpopular with Americans. Musk and President Trump had a very public falling out in June, just after Musk left the White House.
In addition to Musk’s reportedly bogus claims about government contracts, DOGE was responsible for cutting thousands of federal workers and targeting congressionally appropriated funds.
Courts later ruled, however, that federal employees at multiple agencies had to be rehired, ruling they were improperly fired. It was the federal government that wound up paying the bill to rehire them, as the government had put them on paid leave when they were let go. Federal employees also collected the back-paid salaries from when they were not working.
The federal workforce, firings, rehirings, paid leave, and productivity losses were estimated to have cost more than $135 billion in the last fiscal year, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on the federal workforce.
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