You’ve seen the memes. The Shiba Inu dog, the "D.O.G.E." logo, and Elon Musk swinging a cardboard box like he's back at the Twitter—sorry, X—headquarters. But behind the social media theatrics, the government efficiency commission Elon Musk led alongside Vivek Ramaswamy has been a wild, messy, and surprisingly expensive experiment in "disrupting" the federal bureaucracy.
It's 2026. The commission is supposed to be wrapping up its work by the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this July. People expected a chainsaw. What they got was more like a Roomba that occasionally bangs into the walls and costs a fortune to maintain.
The $2 Trillion Dream vs. Reality
When Trump first announced the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk threw out a massive number: $2 trillion in cuts. To put that in perspective, the entire U.S. discretionary budget is usually around $1.7 trillion. You basically can't hit that number without gutting Social Security, Medicare, or the military.
Musk eventually walked that back to $1 trillion. Then $150 billion. Honestly, the math has been a moving target from day one. By late 2025, the commission claimed it had saved about $214 billion, mostly through terminating office leases and cutting "fraud." But here's the kicker: independent auditors and the IRS are skeptical. They argue that by slashing staff at the IRS and other agencies, the government is actually losing revenue.
It’s the classic "spend a dollar to save a dime" problem.
Where the money actually went
While DOGE was busy trying to cut costs, it accidentally triggered some massive expenses. A recent analysis found that the administration "wasted" roughly $10 billion just on paid leave for federal workers who were told to stay home while their roles were "reviewed."
- 154,000 employees: That’s about 7% of the federal workforce put on ice.
- Legal Limbo: Many of these workers are stuck in a cycle of "involuntary leave" because the government can't legally fire them without following civil service laws.
- The "Five Things" Email: Remember when Musk told every federal employee to email a list of five things they did each week to justify their jobs? It turns out, that created a mountain of data that nobody actually had the time to read.
The "Manhattan Project" of Bureaucracy?
Trump called this the "Manhattan Project" of our time. It’s a bold comparison. But instead of splitting the atom, the commission spent a lot of time trying to "delete" federal agencies.
Musk’s strategy was simple: Move fast and break things. He wanted to consolidate 400 agencies down to 99. The problem is that the U.S. government isn't a tech startup. You can't just turn off a server if that server is responsible for air traffic control or processing veteran health benefits.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cut
In late 2025, the VA abruptly cut around 35,000 jobs. This followed a year of "stealth" attrition where another 30,000 roles went unfilled. The result? Wait times for healthcare spiked. It’s one of the clearest examples of where "efficiency" on paper turned into a nightmare in practice.
The Conflict of Interest Elephant
We have to talk about the optics. Musk is a guy whose companies, SpaceX and Tesla, have billions of dollars in federal contracts. Having him oversee the very agencies that regulate his businesses—like the FAA or the EPA—raised a lot of eyebrows.
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Critics point out that while DOGE was cutting programs, SpaceX and Starlink were securing new, lucrative contracts. Is it a conflict? Musk says he's just being efficient. The AFL-CIO and various watchdog groups called it "unconstitutional." The Supreme Court eventually had to step in because DOGE staffers were getting "administrative access" to sensitive procurement systems they probably shouldn't have touched.
Why DOGE is "Deleting Itself"
Vivek Ramaswamy once said that most government projects should have an expiry date. True to his word, the government efficiency commission Elon Musk is scheduled to dissolve by July 4, 2026.
But Musk didn't even wait that long. By May 30, 2025, he had already started offboarding. He later admitted in a podcast that the effort was only "a little bit successful" and that he’d rather spend his time building rockets.
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The "Department" wasn't even a real department. It was a temporary advisory group. It had no power to change laws or appropriate money—that’s still Congress's job. When the political pushback from both Democrats and "old school" Republicans got too loud, the momentum fizzled.
The Lasting Impact (The Good and the Bad)
Did they find any actual waste? Sure. They flagged billions in "improper payments" and shut down hundreds of unused government leases. That's real money.
But the "chaos" legacy is just as real. The Brookings Institution found over 26,000 instances where the government fired someone only to hire them back weeks later because the agency realized they actually needed that person to function.
Actionable Insights: What Happens Next?
If you're a taxpayer or a federal contractor, the DOGE era has some practical takeaways you should keep in mind:
- Watch the "Unused Funds": A lot of the "savings" DOGE claimed are actually just funds that hasn't been spent yet. Expect a massive legal battle over "impoundment"—whether a President can refuse to spend money Congress already approved.
- Digital Service Evolution: While the DOGE name will fade, the "United States DOGE Service" (formerly the U.S. Digital Service) will likely keep trying to modernize old government software. This is the one area where Musk’s "engineer-first" approach actually made sense.
- The Rise of "Schedule F": The commission proved that firing federal workers is hard. Expect future administrations to try and reclassify thousands of civil servants as "at-will" employees to make these kinds of cuts easier in the future.
The government efficiency commission Elon Musk was less about a spreadsheet and more about a vibe shift. It showed that while you can run a government like a business, the "customers" (voters) usually complain a lot more when the service goes down.
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To see the real results, you'll want to track the GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports coming out later this year. They'll be the ones to finally settle the score on whether this was a $2 trillion save or a multi-billion dollar headache.