President Trump and Elon Musk have promised taxpayers great savings when government efficiency was unlocked to the federal government. Now, as he prepares to cut bureaucratic fat from his presidential mission, Musk says without providing details that Doge is likely to save taxpayers only $150 billion.
That's about 15% of the $1 trillion he promised to save, less than $2 trillion in savings he originally promised, and less than 8% of the nearly $7 trillion in savings spent by the federal government in 2024.
The errors and obfuscations underlying Doge's savings claims are well documented. The cost Musk has incurred from what Trump called the government a “hatchet” and taking the resulting firing, agency lockouts and building seizures into court.
Public Services Partnership, a nonprofit organization studying the federal workforce, has used budget figures to create rough estimates that thousands of workers will cost more than $135 billion this year for layoffs, reissuances, loss of productivity and paid leave. The Internal Revenue Service will cost around $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, with 22,000 employees Doge-led departures from 22,000 employees, according to figures from Yale University's Budget Lab. The total number of departures is expected to be 32,000.
These estimates do not include the costs to taxpayers to protect Doge's move in court. Of the approximately 200 cases and appeals related to Trump's agenda, at least 30 cases are involved in the department.
“Mask is not only a massive inflation of the money he saves, but it doesn't account for the exponentially large amount of waste he's creating,” said Max Steer, CEO of Public Services Partnerships. “He gives these costs to Americans, and Americans will pay for years to come.”
Stier and other experts in the federal workforce said this is not necessary. Federal law and previous government shutdowns provided Musk with a legal playbook to reduce the federal workforce, a goal supported by most Americans. However, Musk chose the similar lightning blunt method he used to significantly reduce the Twitter workforce after buying the company in 2022.
“The law is clear,” said Jeri Buchholtz, who has handled employment and layoffs at seven federal agencies, including NASA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, for over 30 years in public services. “They can do everything they do now, but they can't do them the way they do them, they can start over and do them right.
White House spokesman Harrison W. Fields defended Doge's cut, calling for $150 billion that the administration saved “moral and historic.”
“It's important to realize that there's a cost to do nothing, and these so-called experts and groups should not do anything.
Regarding the IRS, he said, “All cuts have been made to make government more efficient, to not be a burden on the American people, and to cut down the important resources and programs that we rely on.”
Based on the latest information available, Doge Cuts covers at least 12% of the 2.4 million private employees in the federal workforce. But there is a huge gap between Doge's planned cuts and the number of people actually leaving.
The acquisition and shooting initially reaped about 100,000 workers, according to the Human Resources Administration. Of these 100,000 workers, at least a quarter of them are re-employed on full pay. In most cases, after the judge ruled that their dismissal was illegal, Musk said Doji “accidentally” workers protected nuclear weapons, ensured aviation safety and the fight against avian flu and Ebola.
When the judge ordered workers to be hired, the government placed them on paid leave. This means adding up the costs of taxpayers rehiring them, as well as the salaries they collect while they are at home.
The layoffs of 10,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services have wiped out the entire Centres for Disease Control and Prevention teams fighting HIV around the world. In an interview, two public health doctors said they were caught off guard because their team's work was always bipartisan support. They faced fire on June 2nd, but said they wanted to go back to work, but they didn't know who they would make their case.
Musk's method, as most Americans say, supported the latest efforts by the US president to reap the federal bureaucracy. Even Trump voters say they're tired of Musk's blood in council town hall and in interviews. A poll released this month found that 58% of those surveyed disapproved how Musk handled Doge's work, while 60% said they disapproved Musk himself.
“We make mistakes.”
A week after Trump's inauguration, the Human Resources Administration sent the now infamous email to more than 2 million federal workers with the subject “forks on the road.” They were told they were at risk of resigning until September and being paid or being fired from the road.
The email sparked rage and confusion over whether Doge had legal authority to pay workers until September. The federal employee union sued, but the judge allowed the program to move forward. About 75,000 people, or about 3%. If the administration does not reject the offer, it will be paid in the fall.
Large acquisitions did not support highly rated performers and did not distinguish important work from non-critical work. As a result, the administration was caught up in trying to reverse the departure of people in key roles.
“We make mistakes,” Musk told cabinet members in February. The move that the judge later determined was violating the Constitution after he boasted that Wood Chipper was feeding the US for international development, Musk discovered that “one of the things we accidentally cancelled for a very short time was Ebola prevention.” However, his claim that he quickly repaired the damage was inaccurate.
Separately, the New York Times' National Nuclear Security Agency's investigation into cuts shows the effectiveness of the acquisition on the country's efforts to protect and modernize nuclear weapons. Of the 130 or more people who were fired or approved, of those who resigned from the Doge invitation, at least 27 were engineers, 13 were program or project analysts, 12 were program or project managers, and 5 were physicists or scientists.
Four of these employees were experts in handling the safe transport of nuclear materials, with a half dozen working in the agency unit building nuclear reactors for nuclear submarines.
Jill Fulby, who headed the National Nuclear Security Agency during the Biden administration, said:
Several people on the nuclear safety team have found new jobs with government contractors they once overseen. Stier said the government has left a disproportionate number of experts in high demand by the private sector.
“There are a lot of people who have the best people in their class. “But it's easy for those who have the option of saying, 'This is crazy, I'm not going to do this anymore.'
“Money that is intentionally wasted”
In mid-February, the Human Resources Administration targets all 220,000 federal probation people. These are new or newly promoted professionals who provide services during a court period of 1-2 years with little worker protection. They included young, tech-savvy expert executives who were hired at a hefty expense to replace the wave of baby boomer retirements. They are hired and trained, or office workers will cost more than $1 million for elite spies.
“This is equivalent to a major league baseball franchise firing all minor league players,” said Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer and lawyer representing some of the fired workers. “It's a ton of money that's been intentionally wasted.”
A federal judge in Maryland determined the cuts were illegal and ordered agencies to re-employ workers, but the government appealed and by March 13, when the legal dispute continued, about 24,000 probation employees from around 20 agencies had been fired. By law, probation employees may be fired only for a cause. Usually due to poor performance, Maryland's U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bouder said in a lengthy ruling.
He ordered the government to remember fired workers, including 7,600 from the Treasury Department, 5,700 from the Department of Agriculture and more than 3,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services, according to court filings. However, the administration instead places them on paid leave, where they collect an average annual salary of $106,000 while waiting on the margins.
With each doge of probation workers, the government lost thousands of dollars spent on hiring, incentive employment, security clearance and training, usually recovered over years of service. In one case, a fired probation employee from the Department of Health and Human Services received a raise after she was resurrected and took paid leave.
The government cut around 400 probation workers at the Federal Aviation Administration after multiple planes crashed, including one who killed 67 people in Washington in January. The layoffs included maintenance mechanics and an aviation safety assistant.
Last month, the CIA confirmed that some officers employed over the past two years have been summoned away from the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and asked security personnel to waive their qualifications. Approximately 80 officers have been let go.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a ranking Democrat for the intelligence news committee, said it would cost $400,000 to acquire CIA recruits through security clearance processes and specialized training.
It gives pain
Theatres around the shooting, including Musk's appearance in a conservative political treaty that swings a chainsaw, also suggest that they are in pain with bureaucracy.
This is a federal employee goal set by Russell T. Vought, and currently leads the Management and Budget office. “When they wake up in the morning, they are considered villains and hope they don't want to go to work,” Voute told a conservative gathering in 2023.
Buchholtz and Steer emphasize that the government is indeed inefficient and needs reform. But by “happily torture people,” Doge said he has undermined the government's ability to recruit young, talented workers and lead modernization.
“The country historically had an independent public service that attracted people who focused on serving Americans,” Buchholtz said. “But this administration values the kind of service that comes from political appointees who will serve the president's joy.”
Reports were provided by Washington's Irene Sullivan, Andrew Dufren, Sharon Raflaniere, Minho Kim, Julie Tate, Zach Montague and Adam Goldman. Kitty Bennett contributed to his research.
