When President Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the initiative was met with both enthusiasm and skepticism. The prospect of cutting $1-2 trillion from the federal budget by 2026 was an ambitious goal, and one that resonated with fiscal conservatives seeking to rein in government spending. However, early results indicate that despite bold promises, the entrenched realities of government spending are proving to be formidable obstacles.
In the months following the November election, Musk and Ramaswamy made sweeping claims about their ability to identify and eliminate wasteful spending. Their approach was to combine canceling government contracts, terminating leases, reducing federal employment, and cutting regulatory costs to achieve a truly spectacular reduction in government spending:
“We’ll aim for $2 trillion, which I believe is the best-case scenario,” Musk said in a January interview. “But you need to allow for some margin. If we target $2 trillion, I think there’s a strong chance we can achieve $1 trillion in spending cuts.”
The appeal of such drastic reductions to anyone paying attention was clear: in a country facing $2 trillion annual deficits, a $36 trillion national debt, and nearly $200 trillion in total liabilities, significant spending cuts are absolutely necessary. However, the actual implementation of DOGE’s plan has so far fallen well short of expectations.
One month into DOGE’s operations, the agency claimed to have saved $55 billion. However, a deeper examination of its own “wall of receipts” revealed only $7.2 billion in confirmed, itemized cuts. For what it’s worth, an investigation by The New York Times suggested the real figure may be as low as $2 billion, a number later reiterated by The Wall Street Journal, and just a fraction of the promised savings.
The debt clock website which many consult, and which displays so-called DOGE-savings, is displaying a number totally divorced from what is actually going on; it’s simply increasing at a rate that assumes DOGE’s projected savings materialize.
There have also been basic accounting errors. One of DOGE’s most glaring missteps involved an $8 billion contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The contract was listed as eliminated, but it turned out to be an $8 million contract, off by three orders of magnitude. DOGE quietly corrected the error but did not acknowledge how this impacted its topline savings figure.
Similarly, NPR found that half of DOGE’s listed contract cancellations (accounting for $6.5 billion in savings) had not actually been terminated as of mid-February.
Taken together, these errors call into question the credibility of DOGE’s savings estimates and make the efforts seem much more like a publicity stunt than a realistic solution to out of control government spending.
This is especially the case because even if DOGE’s auditing and cost-cutting efforts were flawless, the real issue is that the overwhelming majority of federal spending is tied to structural obligations that cannot simply be eliminated.
The sad fact is that the four largest spending categories in the federal budget, Social Security, Medicare, military spending, and interest on the national debt, make up nearly 75% of total federal expenditures. And these are politically untouchable for different reasons:
- Cutting Social Security would be massively unpopular, especially among older voters. The program is considered the third rail of American politics, meaning any serious effort to reduce benefits would face bipartisan resistance.
- Like Social Security, Medicare enjoys widespread public support. Trump has repeatedly stated he will not cut Medicare benefits, meaning DOGE cannot touch a major portion of government spending.
- The U.S. spends more on defense than the next ten nations combined. Yet, Republican lawmakers, including Trump, have opposed significant cuts to defense, arguing that national security must be prioritized.
- Interest on the debt is the fastest-growing expenditure in the federal budget. Unlike discretionary programs, debt interest payments must be made. With rising interest rates, this category will only become more burdensome.
If DOGE truly intends to cut $1-2 trillion annually, that will require either drastic cuts to these core programs (which Trump has already ruled out) or eliminating virtually all discretionary spending, a politically and logistically impossible feat.
For example, addressing the recent conflict between House and Senate Republicans over spending, Trump reiterated his position on FOX, stating: “Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched.”
Even if these proposed cuts passed, they would be spread over ten years, meaning only $200 billion per year, far below DOGE’s stated goal. Simultaneously, extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which would reduce federal revenue by $4.5 trillion over the next decade, would offset those spending cuts entirely.
The facts, then, are basically these:
- The numbers don’t add up. The actual savings DOGE has identified are a tiny fraction of its stated goals. Accounting errors, overestimated cuts, and the lack of enforceability undermine its credibility.
- The real budget problem is structural. The federal government’s major expenditures—Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments—are not discretionary and cannot be easily slashed. Without tackling these, no major deficit reduction is possible.
- Congress and the public won’t support radical cuts. Even if a plan could be devised to meet the $2 trillion goal, the reality is that both politicians and the public have shown no willingness to accept the required sacrifices. Cutting Social Security or defense would be politically disastrous, and discretionary spending alone does not provide enough room for such deep cuts.
As far as final thoughts go, none of this is to be down on the idea of DOGE. The concept behind DOGE is compelling: government waste is real, and efficiency matters. However, history has shown that such initiatives, whether the Keep Commission, Grace Commission, or National Partnership for Reinventing Government, face massive institutional resistance and political realities that prevent meaningful transformation.
Ultimately, while Musk, and before he left, Ramaswamy, may have had good intentions and bold ambitions, cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget was never a serious possibility. Without addressing the fundamental structural spending constraints, DOGE may go down in history as yet another failed effort to reform government—albeit one with a catchy acronym.
