‘One of the biggest failures in political history’: As Elon Musk steps back the underperformance of DOGE becomes clear

Elon Musk is practically out of the door after three months of spectacularly failing to curb federal spending and save the government some money. Now that his tenure at the head of DOGE looks set to end it’s become ever so clear just how bad a job the tech billionaire did.

At the start of Donald Trump’s second term Musk and his department were making some awfully bold claims regarding how much money they were intending to save. DOGE was previously aiming to cut federal spending by $2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year although the budget was revised to $1 trillion later on. Either way it’s safe to say Musk and the rest are way off track. In fact, they have fallen laughably short of their lofty target.

The impact of DOGE is underwhelming to say the least

Currently, the department claims it has saved roughly $150-160 billion through its cuts. However, the key word here is “claimed.” While the details for the terminated contracts have been shared on the DOGE wall of receipts, it only accounts for about $63 billion. Even then, these itemized receipts contain some pretty glaring errors which bring into question whether the numbers are accurate at all.

As for the rest of the money, well, there isn’t a whole lot of detail on where that money came from. Regardless, this doesn’t exactly leave DOGE in the best position to fulfill the promises that were made at the start of Trump’s presidency. They are about 15% of the way to the revised budget and not even 8% of the way to their original goal.

The criticisms against Elon Musk

Of course, Musk was never going to achieve his target, it seems all the billionaire did was cut funding to departments and organizations which he didn’t personally agree with. DOGE was anything but non-partisan. 

What’s worse is the fact that even the meager savings the department claims to have made so far will likely be canceled out by the money it costs to fire workers. That’s right, firing people costs money too. According to The New York Times, Musk also had to rehire around a quarter of the government employees he fired. This would have cost the taxpayer more money as these employees were put on paid leave.

In the end it seems Elon Musk’s approach may not have been the most efficient. How ironic. Anyways, the Tesla CEO will have a more diminished role in the department as of next month as he shifts his attention to his failing car company. Perhaps without him messing things up we could see DOGE actually save the government some money, although that seems unlikely.