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The moment when Elon Musk's most enthusiastic critics awaited him was finally arriving to leave the Trump administration and take control of government efficiency. They guarantee that the outcome was an embarrassing failure, but they couldn't be any more wrong.
Musk has forever changed how Americans view federal spending. That's great.
What will be next for Doge after Elon Musk's departure? “Just starting”
First of all, Doge estimates it saved taxpayers $160 billion. Neering NPR claims that there is only data to prove $63 billion, but even if that's true, it reduces a huge amount of waste.
Was Musk shooting for more numbers? of course. After all, this is literally a man trying to get to Mars. But Doge's savings have already been discovered and will continue to find them until next July, when the sun sets will never sneeze.
Elon Musk, a senior White House adviser, walks to the White House after landing in the South Lawn Marines with President Donald Trump (not pictured) in Washington, D.C. on March 9, 2025. (Samuel Column/Getty Images)
The influence of musk and clumsy is far beyond mere total dollar figures. That's how they identified wasted spending speeds and the absurdity of many programs they revealed and cut that proved to be a game changer.
Who can forget the discovery that former Taliban members gave $132,000 to promote peace, or $20 million to Sesame Street to air in Iraq?
Over the first 60 days of the Trump administration, new and ridiculous spending appeared to be identified every hour. What Americans felt as a vague sense of the federal government being wasted became a concrete example of blatant, frivolous waste.
These revelations moved the windows of Overton in American discourse, centered around spending. We no longer accept the Blue Ribbon Committee, without the authority to study the matter for years, in order to do nothing. We want to take action now.
And while Doge still needs approval from the minister's secretary to finalise the cuts, they generally want to do so.
Musk and Doge show that they're OK to make mistakes when eagerly protecting taxpayer dimes, as they can quickly lock the error.
For example, when funding for the National Academy of Firefighters in Emmitburg, Maryland was cut early in administration, authorities appealed to Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem, who recognized the importance of a program that trains 100,000 firefighters a year. The funds have recovered.

Cutting federal spending isn't like a haircut. There is no reason to be paralyzed by fear when trimming, as it can return something that was accidentally cut back.
Perhaps more than anything, Musk's success with Doge is opening the hood of federal spending and looking calm in the engine.
This is very similar to what he did when he bought Twitter and allowed journalists to create Twitter files, revealing many shady secrets that proved that the platform was rigorously censoring conservative perspectives.
This kind of fundamental transparency is a dislike for a deep state that demands that our money be something like a black box that doesn't flow.
Officials have clearly dealt with federal budgets like the Slash Fund for all sorts of pet projects and the stupid endeavor. The boy hates exporting condoms everywhere and being exposed to light contracts on large contracts to study trans animals.
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For decades, federal spending was like Gibraltar's giant rocks, and no one could hold his arms or head. But now, instead of focusing on the huge spending forest, Mask has found a way to identify dying trees.
It's no surprise that Musk and his supporters feel a measure of disappointment that they couldn't cut more, and that some Congressional Republicans seem less keen to codify the reductions of what was discovered. But politics, as they say, is the art of possibilities.
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Today, thanks to masks, there are far more possibilities out there.
Finally, that's an important point. Federal officials, those who spend our money, must suddenly look over their shoulders and prepare to justify their spending.
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