When Elon Musk launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with promises to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget, it was heralded as a revolutionary moment in American governance. Instead, it may have delivered one of the most expensive failures in recent Washington history.
The numbers tell a surprising story. Despite months of chaotic reorganization, mass firings, and viral social media posts claiming billions in savings, US Treasury data reveals that federal spending actually increased in 2025. Total outlays reached $7.01 trillion, a 4% jump from the previous year’s $6.75 trillion. The efficiency drive, it turns out, wasn’t very efficient at all.
The problem wasn’t just that DOGE failed to cut spending, it actively cost money. According to CBS Money Watch, citing estimates from the Partnership for Public Service, DOGE’s disruptions may have cost taxpayers roughly $135 billion. This figure accounts for paid leave for suspended workers, the expense of rehiring wrongfully terminated staff, and lost productivity across federal agencies.
Much of DOGE’s claimed success was built on accounting sleight of hand. Investigations revealed that the department was counting “ceiling values” (i.e. the maximum theoretical spending on contract) rather than actual expenditures. One egregious example involved claiming $2.9 billion in savings from canceling a migrant children’s shelter contract. The facility had been empty for a year, with only a small retainer being paid. The real savings? Just 4% of the headline figure.
Perhaps most counterproductive was DOGE’s assault on the IRS. In pushing to fire tax enforcement officers to save on salaries, the department eliminated the very people responsible for collecting revenue. The result: a projected $64 billion loss in tax revenue over the next decade. The Economist reported that the IRS cafeteria in Austin had to store mountains of unprocessed paper tax returns because the staff needed to digitize them had been let go.
The operational chaos extended far beyond the IRS. DOGE recruited a 19-year-old technologist who had reportedly been fired from a cybersecurity internship for leaking secrets. Leadership at major agencies churned monthly. The gutting of USAID, based partly on a viral but false claim about sending condoms to Hamas (Musk had confused Gaza Strip with Gaza province in Mozambique), may have cost the US immeasurably in soft power and global influence.
By May 2025, the project had imploded. The relationship between Trump and Musk deteriorated into a public feud, culminating in Musk’s deleted tweet accusing Trump of appearing in the Epstein files. By November, when Reuters contacted the Office of Personnel Management about DOGE’s status, the response was brutally simple: “That doesn’t exist.”
Musk himself seemed to acknowledge the failure. When asked on Katie Miller’s podcast if he would do it again, he replied, “I don’t think so,” adding he would have “basically worked on my companies” instead. Meanwhile, the national debt continues to grow, with interest payments approaching $1 trillion annually, dead money that serves only to compound past mistakes.
The ultimate irony? A mechanism to recover government waste already exists and actually works. The False Claims Act, dating to the Civil War, allows whistleblowers to sue fraudsters and keep a portion of recovered funds. Last year, it quietly recovered hundreds of millions. No memes required.