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DOGE has failed to cut anywhere near what Musk promised [theregister.com]:

Comment Elon Musk's Trump-blessed DOGE unit has made a lot of noise and a lot of headlines for its heavy-handed hatchet tactics [theregister.com] within supposedly bloated governmental organizations.

But its actual results are so far falling far short of the Tesla tycoon's original promises.

Musk pledged [cnn.com] to use his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE [theregister.com], to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, fraud, and waste when Trump elevated [theregister.com] him to the pseudo-cabinet level post shortly after winning re-election last year. Uncle Sam spends about $7 trillion annually.

The SpaceX oligarch later revised [x.com] that target number down to $1 trillion, and in a White House cabinet meeting this month, the world's richest man shared [youtube.com] that he was "excited to announce" around $150 billion in savings for fiscal year 2026, which for the federal government begins this coming October.

That number is roughly echoed by a DOGE savings tracker [doge.gov], updated weekly, that purports to show "estimated savings" of $155 billion so far at time of writing - supposedly with receipts.

But those receipts seem to be a bit, well, questionable. As numerous outlets [nytimes.com] have reported [npr.org], the data shared on DOGE's website has been riddled with mistakes, with inflated cuts, credit claimed for contracts terminated years ago, and claims of contract cancellations that appeared to be incorrect.

Even if it were unimpeachably accurate, it's far cry from the trillion-dollar target Musk claimed [reuters.com] he'd be able to accomplish by the time his 130-day tenure as a special government employee expired.

More damningly, it's a blip in overall government spending - around 2.2 percent of the $6.8 trillion the Feds spent in 2024.

Speaking of federal government spending …

And then there's the fact that the US government has already spent at least $135 billion more this year than it did in 2024, although at least some of that spending was locked in before Trump's second term began.

That data comes courtesy of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, an economic research group, which maintains a real-time tally [hamiltonproject.org] of federal government spending flowing from the Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Service to various other departments.

As of April 15, the Trump administration has spent $2.334 trillion, whereas the Biden administration had only notched $2.199 trillion in spending by the same date in 2024 - not a big difference on a graph, but a lot of extra cash being doled out as the administration ostensibly tries to cut costs.

And where, you may wonder, is that extra spending coming from? Based on our scroll through the various outlay recipients available in the graph, a chunk of that extra spending is coming from sources like the Treasury Department's judgements fund, the source of government money that gets paid out when the Feds lose a lawsuit, which so far has doled out $1.5 billion compared to just $430 million by the same point last year.

• Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog [theregister.com]
• Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney [theregister.com]
• All right, you can have one: DOGE access to Treasury IT OK'd judge [theregister.com]
• Judge says US Treasury 'more vulnerable to hacking' since Trump let the DOGE out [theregister.com]

There was also a massive spike in "other farm service" payments from the US Department of Agriculture this month, with disbursements reaching $6.3 billion compared to $1.1 billion by April 15, 2024.

There were also considerable, but proportionally smaller, increases in spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Commerce (which has had its hands full justifying [theregister.com] Trump's tariffs [theregister.com]), Department of the Interior, Department of Transportation, Small Business Administration and more. There's even been a slight $5 billion increase in federal employee salaries despite plenty of jobs being eliminated thus far in Trump's term.

All those golf trips to Florida [theguardian.com] add to the bill as well.

Nobody should be too surprised by Musk's missed goals, as the South African-born American centibillionaire has a long history here. In 2016, he said he felt "pretty good about [techcrunch.com]" a Tesla being able to drive itself coast to coast by 2017, and predicted SpaceX would launch a rocket to Mars [cnet.com] in 2024. In 2019, he predicted [cnbc.com] there'd be a million so-called Tesla "robotaxis" on the road by the end of 2020. None of those things have happened yet.

We've reached out to a number of people, from the congressional DOGE caucus (yes, that's a real thing [house.gov]), to DOGE leadership and even Elon Musk, none of whom responded to questions. The White House did respond, but only to tell us that DOGE's work had had massive results and not to touch on the gulf between that $1 trillion promise and reality. ®

There is one thing working for DOGE

And it's data. If its promises of cutting a trillion-plus bucks do not work out, the unit has still managed to get its hands on a load of federal government information. As well as the security concerns of putting too much info on citizens, non-citizens, and organizations into the hands of a few – compartmentalization is a thing – there's also the question of conflict of interest.

Musk runs businesses that rely on contracts from the federal government and are regulated by the government – SpaceX and Tesla spring to mind – which is the very body he was able to rifle through and select programs and staff to cut from.

But back to the data; here's some recent stories on DOGE's access to central information:

• Team DOGE had access to all kinds of info at America's top employment watchdog, a whistleblower has claimed [theregister.com], leading to someone apparently using a Russian IP address to connect in remotely using the correct credentials, with only IT policies blocking overseas logins stopping the attempt.
• After some legal back and forth, DOGE has been allowed into [theregister.com] the US Treasury IT environment to a degree. The operation also rocked up [theregister.com] at America's road safety regulator, the body that oversees Musk's Tesla empire.
• According to Democrats [theregister.com], Team DOGE reportedly poured internal data into unvetted, unauthorized external AI systems to look for efficiencies and costs to cut.
• DOGE aides also broke [theregister.com] the Social Security website, it is claimed.
• Then there was that nonsense about tape storage [theregister.com].

In functioning democracies, we get the governments we elect as a population. That much is obvious. What is sometimes forgotten is that the governments we elect are supposed to work for us. Competence, deference to the law, and the freedom to scrutinize and criticize, at a minimum are required.

ICYMI:The tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘legion’ of babies — and their mothers [wsj.com].

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