Musk’s DOGE agency closes after failing to meet $2 trillion US budget savings target, analysis shows

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a highly controversial body established in the United States during the administration of Donald Trump, was officially shut down on July 8.

Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), welcomed the termination of the department, stating that the structure left behind no savings and caused immense damage to public services.

Erwin noted that while Donald Trump and Elon Musk implemented massive cuts to public programs under the pretext of achieving budget savings, no savings were ultimately realized.

The NFFE president further stated that during this process, trillions of dollars in tax privileges were instead provided to the wealthiest segments of society.

Emphasizing that the failure to publish a final activity report following the closure of DOGE amounted to an admission of defeat, Erwin offered the following assessment:

“We welcome the end of DOGE, the most destructive government reform initiative of the past century. DOGE has left a deep scar on the federal workforce. It has now become far more difficult to recruit and retain personnel with the talent and experience necessary for agencies to carry out their duties. The American people will have to pay the price for these errors and imprudence for decades.”

New York Times analysis refutes claims

An analysis published by The New York Times in late 2025, which examined federal procurement and contracting records during the first nine months of Trump’s second term, refuted the budget claims made by DOGE.

The analysis revealed that the budget cuts claimed by Musk and Trump did not yield any savings, but may have instead generated additional costs for the public.

As a result of the cuts implemented by Musk and Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought, who both operated within the framework of DOGE, 317,000 federal employees were terminated.

It was reported that similar cutting and restructuring initiatives are continuing at the Department of Agriculture, while unions continue to resist the process.

In early 2025, Musk and Trump had promised to secure $2 trillion in savings by combating budget irregularities, waste, and abuse. However, by the end of the process, the officially claimed savings amount stood at just $215 billion—only one-tenth of the projected target.

Analysts determined that it remains unclear how much of this amount was actually cut from genuine waste categories, noting that the vast majority of the reductions stemmed from the salary budgets of terminated personnel who had been administering critical public services.

The New York Times team wrote that DOGE failed to reach its target of reducing federal spending by $1 trillion before October 2025, and that federal spending actually increased rather than decreased during this period.

According to the analysis, 28 of the 40 largest cuts claimed by DOGE, including the two highest-budget items, turned out to be completely false.

It was determined that these two contracts, which concerned aircraft maintenance and information technology, had a combined value of $7.9 billion and remained fully in effect.

These two items reportedly accounted for a larger budget than the total of the other 29,000 cuts claimed by DOGE.

Terminated employees establish tent city

Following the layoffs, affected federal employees established a tent city in front of Union Station in Washington.

Gathering under the umbrella of an organization called the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), the former public employees established a support center there for shelter, solidarity, and job search assistance.

A statement published on the organization’s website read: “We are here to unite the federal workforce, protect vital services, and defend the public we serve.”

GAO already combats waste

Randy Erwin pointed out that the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an official and bipartisan agency tasked with combating waste and abuse within the federal government, has already been active for many years.

Consequently, he emphasized that there was never any need for a parallel structure like DOGE.

According to one of the latest reports published by the GAO, a gap of $186 billion emerged in the federal budget due to “improper payments,” irregularities, and waste during the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on September 30.

More than 73% of this amount occurred across five key areas: Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (food assistance), the earned income tax credit, and pandemic-era small business support programs.

The GAO report indicated that between $132 billion and $251 billion in additional savings could be achieved through measures ranging from streamlining the Navy’s shipbuilding processes to preventing duplicate payments in the social security system, though this would require congressional approval.

It was reported that during its operational period, DOGE dismissed or placed on paid leave thousands of federal employees, but because the services performed by this personnel were of critical importance, they later had to be rehired.

This situation was found to have resulted in a major waste of taxpayer funds rather than savings for the public budget.