Elon Musk’s DOGE Service has shaped much of the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term — and reshaped much of the government through its massive cuts to the federal workforce and programs, including at least 121,000 employees laid off or targeted for layoffs, according to a CNN analysis, and nearly the same number who have opted into a deferred resignation program, according to a Politico analysis.
“DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants,” Politico reports. “It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.”
Yet for all the noise created by the DOGE buzzsaw and the turmoil Musk and Co. have caused, overall government spending has actually increased this year. The Penn Wharton Budget Model’s federal budget tracker, which uses Treasury data, shows that total spending is up 5.9% for the year so far compared with the same period in 2024 — a difference of more than $80 billion, Penn’s Kent Smetters told Politico.
There are, of course, some notable areas where spending has fallen. Spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is down 32.4% from last year based on the tracking data after the agency was targeted for deep cuts early on and eventually saw its remaining programs absorbed into the State Department. Spending by the State Department is down 24.4%, and Education Department outlays are down 11.2%.
But DOGE itself might not save much this year. The group now claims it will save $160 billion through its cuts, far less than Musk originally targeted. The promised savings have been questionable on their own, but DOGE’s work also comes with a cost, and the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on the federal workforce, now estimates that DOGE’s actions will cost $135 billion (the White House dismissed the report).
“Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating,” Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, told The New York Times. “He’s inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come.”