Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E is failing in real time

The numbers are in, and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) is already falling apart. The U.S. Treasury Department’s daily reports show that despite Elon’s massive layoffs and budget cuts, the federal government is spending money even faster than before.

Since January 21, 2025, when Donald Trump took office for his second term and put Elon in charge of federal budget cuts, the government has spent more than it did during the same periods in 2023 and 2024. Adjusting for inflation barely changes the picture—spending is still higher than last year.

D.O.G.E was supposed to slash government waste, shut down costly agencies, and end reckless spending. But after weeks of cuts, contract cancellations, and chaos, the government’s financial reports show no actual savings. Elon promised that his strategy would cut spending deeper than Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s, but reality is telling a different story. Nothing has changed—except for the people who lost their jobs.

D.O.G.E cuts aren’t lowering government spending

The biggest problem for D.O.G.E is simple: it’s cutting in the wrong places. The Treasury’s financial breakdowns show that the parts of the budget Elon can actually touch don’t add up to much. In 2022, the total payroll for civilian government employees was just 4% of federal spending. Adding in active-duty military salaries only raised it to 7%. Even if D.O.G.E fired every single government worker, the government would still be spending over 90% of its budget.

Government contracts aren’t the issue either. In 2023, nondefense agency contracts made up 5% of federal spending, and with the Defense Department included, it was 12%. Elon’s team has cut plenty of contracts, but those reductions barely make a dent in overall spending.

The real money? Entitlement programs and debt interest. Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid accounts for most of the budget, and interest on the national debt grows every year. But D.O.G.E doesn’t control any of that. Elon can fire as many employees as he wants and shut down as many agencies as possible—the money will still be spent.

The numbers also show that discretionary spending, which once accounted for three-quarters of the federal budget in the 1960s, has now shrunk to just over a quarter. The part that D.O.G.E actually controls—nondefense discretionary spending—was only 14.9% of total spending in 2023. Even if Elon eliminated every single thing D.O.G.E was targeting, the federal budget would still be massive.

Elon is running into the same problem David Stockman faced in the Reagan administration. Stockman cut real non-defense discretionary spending by 18% in three years, but it still didn’t stop the government from spending more overall. That’s because defense spending grew, and entitlement programs remained untouched—just like today.

D.O.G.E is causing chaos, not efficiency

Since its launch, D.O.G.E has moved quickly, but not effectively. Elon’s department has laid off thousands, shut down agencies, and slashed contracts faster than anyone expected. But instead of improving efficiency, the strategy has backfired.

The first round of layoffs hit probationary employees first, removing the newest hires and recently promoted staff—the people who were supposed to help modernize government operations. D.O.G.E had to walk this decision back.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was dismantled, but then partially restored when banks realized they needed it to roll back regulations.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) saw major cutbacks, which contrasted with the Reagan administration’s strategy of increasing IRS funding to boost tax enforcement. The result was less money being collected and an even bigger deficit for America.

Even D.O.G.E’s financial reports are unreliable. The department claims to be saving billions, but independent financial experts keep finding major discrepancies. Instead of making the numbers clear, D.O.G.E has made it harder to check federal spending data at all.

While Elon’s leadership team includes tech industry names like Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Steve Davis, one of Elon’s longtime business partners, none of them have government experience. Running a business is not the same as running a government. The U.S. budget isn’t a startup that can be optimized through layoffs and automation.

The biggest problem might be Elon himself. The man who built Tesla and SpaceX is the same one who spends hours posting on X (formerly Twitter). There’s a difference between Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, and @elonElon, the account posting non-stop rants about politics and crypto. The federal government has handed real power to the second one.

Santi Ruiz, a policy researcher at the Institute for Progress, summed up the situation: “Everyone evaluating D.O.G.E right now is like a blind man feeling different parts of an elephant.” No one can see the whole picture yet. But the parts we can see don’t look good.