Statistics from February 2025 show federal spending hitting a historic high despite Elon Musk’s efforts within DOGE.
It looks like Elon Musk needs to get out his gilded chainsaw because all those cuts the Department of Government Efficiency is making don’t seem to be adding up. There have already been complaints about a litany of errors on the DOGE’s supposed ‘wall of receipts’, with Musk and his team having to remove $4 billion worth of savings that were incorrectly filed.
Musk has said his new department is on track to make $1 trillion in savings, and although he says this is working out at $4 billion a day, many think the math ain’t mathing.
The tech billionaire has claimed there’s half a trillion dollars of fraud in the likes of Social Security, while he’s also described government-funded non-government organizations as a ‘giant loophole’.
Still, the DOGE’s wall of receipts stagnated around the $105 billion mark and has recently climbed to just $115 billion at the time of writing.
According to the Financial Times, DOGE has yet to dent federal spending, and in fact, it’s actually gone up. The site reports that new Treasury data claims spending rose to a record-breaking $603 billion in February 2025.
Federal spending has actually gone up under the DOGE (Samuel Corum / Stringer / Getty)
Many departments failed to register any decrease, and across the board, spending rose by $40 billion when compared to February 2024 – this marks a 7% increase.
Elsewhere, the first five months of fiscal 2025 recorded an equally record-breaking $1.147 trillion budget deficit. This includes a $307 billion deficit for President Donald Trump‘s first full month in office. Worryingly, this was up 4% from the same time a year ago.
With thousands of government jobs being slashed, many are questioning where all the money is going. Discussing Musk’s so-called cuts, economic policy expert Jessica Riedl explained: “Doge savings are so small as not to be identifiable in monthly spending totals.”
Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio adhering to DOGE’s suggestions and halving USAID’s monthly outgoing to $226 million, that figure is ‘dwarfed’ by monthly healthcare rising by 3% a month…working out at $5 billion. There’s also been a 6% rise in Social Security outlays that adds up to another $8 billion.
Riedl continued: “Some 75 per cent of all federal spending goes to social security, Medicaid, Medicare, defence, veterans and interest — and none of that has been touched.
“There is zero indication that such savings have actually been identified.”
Even the Treasury itself has been spending more, highlighting how its own spending spiked by $29 billion when compared to February 2024. This is attributed to a $10 billion uptick in monthly debt servicing (now $86 billion), as well as tax credits and associated payments climbing by $14 billion.
Musk recently spoke out about DOGE’s mission in the aftermath of his own personal wealth plummeting by $29 billion in a single day. Despite looking defeated, he vowed to keep following the money and making cuts.
All of this comes amid calls to restrict DOGE’s powers and the POTUS telling Musk to use a ‘scalpel’ rather than a ‘hatchet’. If this wasn’t bad enough, a federal judge has ordered the DOGE to release records on how it’s running things. We imagine there are some uncomfortable conversations going on right now.
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Federal worker who voted for Trump speaks out after being fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE
The former U.S. Forest Service worker says she now regrets voting for Trump
A federal worker who was fired by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has spoken to CNN about the moment she found out. And what’s worse, she voted for Donald Trump.
The Department of Government Efficiency is taking no prisoners, and with Elon Musk heading up a team that’s attempting to slash $2 trillion from government spending, we always knew that heads were going to roll.
President Donald Trump says that while he’s happy with the work his ‘First Buddy’ and the DOGE are doing, he wants them to be ‘more aggressive.’ It seems Musk has taken this in his stride, sending out a mass email that demanded staff justify their accomplishments.
Musk and Trump have been slashing jobs across the government (Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty)
Alongside concerns that Musk’s email could be illegal, a federal judge has found that the mass firing of thousands of probationary employees was likely ‘unlawful.’ That hasn’t stopped legions of workers from being given the boot. Among them is Ryleigh Cooper, a former U.S. Forest Service worker who is baffled that she lost her job even though she voted for Trump.
As explained by CNN, Cooper’s dreams of becoming a mother were spurred on by Trump claiming he’d make IVF free. Unfortunately for Cooper, she didn’t know that her vote would come at the cost of her job.
CNN’s Laura Coates spoke to Cooper and asked what it was like to learn she was being let go. Cooper admitted: “It was really hard. I was on the phone with my best friend Kelly at the time. We were just discussing her life and how things were going, and I looked at my phone, and I had gotten a text from our union rep.
“He told me that I was going to be fired the next day, and I told her, ‘I have to go, I’m getting fired tomorrow.’ And my heart just sank.”
When Coates discussed the idea that the American people want to see a streamlined government, and this is something Trump is delivering on, Cooper said this wasn’t the reason she voted for him.
Referring to herself as a swing voter, Cooper said Trump’s promise of fertility treatment was the single issue that got her vote: “I want to be a mom. Women who have gone through that experience, that heartbreaking feeling of wanting something that you might never have, they understand how much of your time is taken up with those thoughts, and how overwhelming and lonely it can feel.”
When asked if she regretted voting for Trump, Cooper solemnly said that she feels regret and has had “a lot of tumultuous thoughts about that day.” Saying it’s easy to get tunnel vision when you aren’t given an endless amount of options, she continued: “I also had to come to terms with the fact that I was likely going to be a part of, you know, taking chances away from other groups of people, and that’s never sat well with me.”
Cooper says she’s been getting a lot of hate mail for speaking out about both voting for Trump and her firing: “I’ve had people tell me that they hope I never have a child and I got exactly what I deserve.
“As much as all the terrible comments have been coming through, I’ve also received an immense amount of support, especially from women who have gone through IVF, who struggle with infertility.”
While disappointed by her current situation, Cooper hopes it highlights the issue of infertility among women in the USA. Sadly, Trump’s February 18 “Expanding Access to in Vitro Fertilization” executive order simply reduces the cost of treatment and hasn’t actually made it free.
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Donald Trump signs major executive order giving more power to Elon Musk’s DOGE
The move gives DOGE more control over how departments spend their money
Elon Musk’s role as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, known as ‘DOGE’ for short, has revolved around the cutting of what he deems to be ‘wasteful’ federal spending, but a new executive order signed by US President Donald Trump has increased the length at which DOGE’s power extends.
The Department of Government Efficiency was almost purpose-built with Musk at its help, as he immediately pledged a eye-watering $2,000,000,000,000 in cuts from governmental spending.
Among the list of targets include key government departments like Education, Health, Defense, and USAID, and recent actions saw Musk send a government-wide email threatening the jobs of over 100,000 federal workers.
Elon Musk has led mass government spending cuts as head of DOGE (Valerie Plesch for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
While experts have questioned claims that DOGE has managed to save $65 billion so far, President Trump has used his power to increase the Department’s control over wider governmental spending with a new executive order, as reported by The Guardian.
“This order commences a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans,” the change details, “to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public.”
What this new executive order requires is that all government departments record their payments and spending within a centralized system that also makes them ‘justify’ the need for the money to be spent. This information will then be shared and analyzed by DOGE, and potentially even shared with the public.
As a result, Musk and DOGE have gained significantly more power to uproot and block spending across the federal space, allowing them to apply their reductions and locate ‘waste’ and ‘inefficiencies’ as they happen.
President Trump has outlined that his administration “has to” cut down the overall size of the government, adding: “We’re bloated. We’re sloppy. We have a lot of people that aren’t doing their job.”
Trump’s latest executive order gives DOGE more power to prevent ‘wasteful’ spending (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
That’s likely the reasoning behind the aforementioned emails, as they required recipients to state everything that they had done in their job within the last week, essentially testing that they’re actually ‘working’ to a sufficient standard.
Trump has also echoed his belief that money is being wasted in other key executive orders, most notably in halting production of the California high speed rail project which has had over $11 billion already invested in the last decade.
Things aren’t going entirely smoothly within the Department of Government Efficiency though, as Musk has recently had to deal with an unforced mass resignation, as 20 employees all signed a letter addressing their disapproval of the actions they were asked to undertake as part of DOGE.
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Experts cast serious doubt over Elon Musk’s alleged $65,000,000,000 in government savings
DOGE’s savings reportedly don’t match up
The total savings reported by Elon Musk’s governmental advisory board DOGE have been called into question by experts, as while claims from the Department indicate $65,000,000,000 in cuts, official reports appear to say otherwise.
Having shown strong support for US President Donald Trump during his election campaign trail, Elon Musk was subsequently rewarded with a role as the head of new private advisory board – the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as ‘DOGE’ for short.
Musk has pledged major cuts to government spending as head of DOGE (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
This new Department, as the name suggests, has been tasked with making federal operations and America as a whole more ‘efficient’ through cost-cutting means, and made headlines with an initial pledge to slash upwards of $2,000,000,000,000 from the federal budget within its short lifespan.
Musk and DOGE have been incredibly active since Trump regained office, having recently sent out government-wide emails that threaten the roles of around 100,000 federal employees, and multiple key departments have seen significant budget cuts leading to widespread job losses.
Departments including Veterans Affairs, Health, and Defense have all been hit by DOGE in recent efforts, and a look at the official DOGE website shows that the Department of Education, General Services Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency lead the ‘Most Total Savings’ leaderboard.
On this same website is the reported overall savings figure of $65 billion, which DOGE claims is a “combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”
However, as reported by ABC News, the only individual receipts that DOGE officially provide numbers for are lease termination contracts, which amount to $144 million, leaving it ‘impossible’ to verify the overall figure that Musk’s department claims.
Experts have called into question DOGE’s reported $65 billion in savings (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Musk himself walked back on the initial $2 trillion target claiming it was unrealistic, but even if the reported $65 billion figure is correct, that still leaves them just 6.5% of the way having already executed mass budget cuts.
Outside of the pure monetary savings, some have called into question the lack of transparency behind the reason why each ‘saving’ was made. One comment on the r/news subreddit outlines: “I really don’t understand the ‘list’. It’s always like a sentence describing what it spent without further detail. Like what the f*** are those [supposed to] mean? Where did it spend money on? Why is it wasteful?”
Another comment replied arguing that these descriptions are “intentionally vague so it can be whatever they want you to believe it is. Without content it’s absolutely meaningless.”
Whether this pressure will lead to further transparency is still yet to be seen, but it shows that many aren’t as convinced of DOGE’s ‘efficiency’ as Musk might have hoped.
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Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts one government agency’s staff to just one person
The cuts were made following a new executive order
Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as ‘DOGE’, have cut down one federal agency to a single employee, following on from a new executive order signed by President Trump.
DOGE is a new private advisory board created by US President Donald Trump with Elon Musk at the head, aiming to cut significant spending from the federal budget that is deemed by staff to be ‘wasteful’ and ‘inefficient’.
Reportedly working upwards of 120 hours every single week, the Department has been tearing through key federal areas including Education, Health, and Veterans Aid, and has seemingly saved around $65 billion so far – although experts have cast doubt on this figure.
While Musk and his workers have previously threatened the jobs of over 100,000 government workers through a widespread email request, DOGE’s latest actions have cut one federal agency’s staff down to a single individual, as per the New York Post.
A recent post from the DOGE account on X outlines this move in an official statement:
“The Inter-American Foundation, an agency whose primary action was to issue foreign grants ($60M budget), has been reduced to its statutory minimum (1 active employee).”
Alongside this, the Department has also announced the cancellation of a number of grants awarded by the Inter-American Foundation, including money for alpaca farming in Peru, vegetable gardens in El Salvador, and beekeeping in Brazil.
These efforts, while in line with DOGE’s general mission, fall in line with a recently-signed executive order from President Trump, titled ‘Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy‘.
This order outlines the necessity to “dramatically reduce the size of the Federal Government, while increasing its accountability to the American people,” particularly highlighting the reduction of areas that are “unnecessary’ in order to “minimize waste and abuse, reduce inflation and promote American freedom and innovation.”
Elon Musk has waved the ‘chainsaw of bureaucracy’ in more than one area this week (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
The Inter-American Foundation is one of the four named entities within this particular executive order, alongside the Presidio Trust, the United States African Development Foundation, and the United States Institute of Peace.
It’s clear then that it will only be a matter of time before all of the mentioned departments will be reduced to the legal minimum number of workers, which DOGE’s recent announcement indicates is just one.
This is far from the first executive order that has increased the power of Elon Musk’s private agency, as previous pushes have allowed DOGE to access government spending information through a centralized system, requiring federal departments to ‘justify’ how they use their money which subsequently makes it easier for Musk’s team to cut it off.