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Initially, DOGE was supposed to save $2 trillion, then $1 trillion. They now claim $150 billion, which is a lie. DOGE failed.
DOGE Failed.
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Summary
The speaker denounces the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as an over‑hyped exercise that promised $2 trillion in annual savings but has produced no documented cuts, only mass layoffs, agency chaos, and longer wait times for services such as Social Security and IRS assistance.
Five key takeaways
- DOGE’s savings pledge shrank from $2 trillion to $1 trillion, then to $150 billion—and even that figure lacks supporting evidence.
- A New York Times investigation found $92 billion of the claimed cuts “unspecified,” while much of the remaining $58 billion had already been booked by the previous administration.
- Thousands of federal workers lost their jobs, gutting watchdog offices and frontline services that ordinary Americans rely on.
- Federal spending has actually increased in 2025, underscoring the gap between DOGE’s rhetoric and fiscal reality.
- Critics warn that the real waste lies in Pentagon contracts and corporate subsidies, not in social programs now suffering from staff cuts.
DOGE illustrates how right‑wing austerity cloaks cruelty in buzzwords: it starves agencies that safeguard the public while shielding corporate welfare and military excess. Progressives argue that genuine efficiency comes from auditing bloated defense contracts, ending fossil‑fuel giveaways, and investing in the civil servants who keep Social Security checks timely and tax cheats accountable.
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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began life in January 2025 as Donald Trump’s showpiece “run‑government‑like‑a‑startup” experiment, fronted by Elon Musk and hyped as the blunt instrument that would slice $2 trillion—nearly 30 percent—out of annual federal spending. That swaggering promise soon shrank: by the inauguration, it was $1 trillion; by mid-April, it had dwindled to $150 billion, and even that figure appears largely fabricated. Fortune reported Musk’s abrupt downgrade on April 11, noting that the new target represents barely seven cents on the dollar of the original boast. The Independent, citing a cabinet briefing, confirmed the retreat and noted that Musk admitted DOGE would realize only “15 percent of a trillion‑dollar goal.” To create the illusion of success, DOGE released a scatter‑shot “Wall of Receipts” full of double‑counted contracts and savings previously booked by the Biden administration—a sleight of hand documented by Reason and corroborated by New York Times reporting that $92 billion of the alleged cuts were “unspecified” accounting smoke.
While the numbers collapsed, the damage metastasized. Musk’s team, operating without Senate confirmation and often without basic security clearances, cold‑called agencies to demand spreadsheets, then fired the employees who could explain them. Government Executive tracked the first wave of mass firings—targeting every diversity‑equity‑inclusion office in the federal workforce—executed under a revived Schedule F authority that allows the White House to dismiss career civil servants at will. The carnage quickly spread: Fortune detailed a 36‑hour “scream‑filled” layoff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that emptied cubicles even as a court injunction sought to shield staff. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked the purge, calling the move a potential violation of due‑process protections, yet the human toll had already been inflicted.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) suffered perhaps the most conspicuous blow. In March, The Washington Post obtained an internal memo from the acting commissioner warning that DOGE-imposed head-count caps “will make mistakes” and compromise customer service for 67 million beneficiaries.. By early April, the agency’s website crashed repeatedly after DOGE demanded deep IT layoffs—the same portal retirees now need to appeal benefit denials or report identity theft. An Associated Press investigation revealed plans to eliminate up to half of the SSA’s 60,000‑person workforce, threatening phone-line wait times that already average more than an hour during peak periods. Cutting “waste,” it seems, meant cutting the very people who deliver earned benefits to seniors and disabled Americans.
IRS chaos underscores the pattern. Reuters reported on April 18 that Musk’s allies installed an acting commissioner without the Treasury Secretary’s knowledge, only to see the appointment reversed days later after turf warfare exploded inside the administration. The revolving door has paralyzed tax-refund processing and stalled the agency’s long-planned crackdown on billionaire tax evasion.
Progressives long argued that the real hemorrhage of public money flows not through Social Security checks or consumer‑protection fines but through the Pentagon’s unaudited procurement books, fossil‑fuel giveaways, and corporate tax loopholes large enough to fly a Gulfstream through. DOGE, by contrast, beheaded the very watchdogs tasked with monitoring that corporate grift while green‑lighting subsidies for favored defense contractors and fossil majors—a detail confirmed by the Economic Times, which noted that Musk explicitly promised industry lobbyists the “efficiencies” would not touch the subsidies they prize. In practice, DOGE substitutes spectacle for substance: it fires frontline workers, erases institutional memory, and raises a “mission accomplished” banner over phantom savings.
The broader democratic cost is harder to quantify, but it is more corrosive. When seniors dial SSA and hear a busy signal, they do not blame an ideological crusade in the West Wing; they blame “government.” When the CFPB cannot investigate predatory lenders because its legal team was dismissed, consumers experience deregulated misery as inevitable. By manufacturing bureaucratic failure, DOGE provides right‑wing ideologues the proof point they crave: Washington “doesn’t work,” so why not outsource everything to the billionaires who broke it?
A progressive course correction would flip that script. First, restore staffing and morale at frontline agencies by funding them through the repeal of the Trump tax cuts, which directed $1.7 trillion to the top 5 percent. Second, audit the Pentagon and cancel redundant weapons systems—the Government Accountability Office estimates $209 billion in savings over ten years from scrapping programs the services themselves do not want. Third, end fossil‑fuel leasing on public lands and phase out the $20 billion‑a‑year in direct subsidies that prop up record oil profits. Finally, enshrine Schedule F abolition in statute to prevent future strong‑man presidents from treating civil servants as political piñatas.
DOGE’s trajectory lays bare a timeless lesson: austerity masquerading as efficiency invariably targets the powerless while insulating the powerful. It erodes the connective tissue of a modern society—trust in shared institutions—yet fails to accomplish any of its ostensible fiscal goals. In that sense, DOGE’s failure is not a bug; it is a feature of a governing philosophy that starts with contempt for government itself. The antidote is not technocratic tinkering, but a moral recommitment to the public good: invest in people, police corporate predation, and build capacity rather than dismantle it for cable-news soundbites. Only by repudiating Musk’s destructive theatrics can the nation move from performative wrecking‑ball politics to the patient, progressive work of democratic renewal.
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