Elon Musk and DOGE promised $2 trillion in savings. In reality, government spending is up
Talk about clowns. Instead of delivering $2 trillion of savings, DOGE is instead set to increase overall government spending as a side effect of its brutal cuts.
According to a model by the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, using weekly Treasury data, spending climbed 6.3% (about $156 billion) since Trump took office, compared with the first four months of 2024 when Joe Biden was president.
Many of Musk’s cuts will actually cost, including taxpayer funds going to an army of lawyers from the Department of Justice battling a cascade of court cases against the government’s dismantling that many judges have already said appears to be illegal. Damages from any illegal firings are likely also to be extremely pricey. So is the loss of critically important workers who earn far more than their salaries, or will have to be replaced for critical services by more expensive private-sector employees.
Among the most massive costs will be the huge reduction in workers at the Internal Revenue Service, who are worth their weight in gold because of the taxes they collect or ferret out from cheats, the key source of income for the country.
Tags: smash-and-grab elon-musk us-politics doge fail government