From $2 tn to just $150 bn, how Musk downsized Doge savings under Trump

First, it was $2 trillion. Then, it was $1 trillion. Now, it’s $150 billion.

This is how Elon Musk’s purported savings in the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) have shifted over the months.

In the beginning, Musk said that he would cut $2 trillion in federal government’s wasteful expenditure. Then, last month, he revised that to $1 trillion.

In the latest revision, Trump said in a Cabinet meeting on Thursday that Doge plans to cut $150 billion in government spending — a reduction of 85 per cent.

From Musk’s brief remarks, it was not clear whether $150 billion are the expected savings throughout the financial year or only the amount that has been saved so far and more spending may be cut in the remainder of the year.

Musk admits Doge is a dud

Inadvertently, Musk has admitted that Doge has been a spectacular failure so far.

“I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in ’26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion,” said Musk at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday.

However, just last month, Musk told Fox News that Doge would save $1 trillion by the time his time as the de facto head of Doge would be up.

While neither Musk nor President Donald Trump have given the timeline of Musk’s departure from Doge, the terms of his employment mean that his tenure would end by July 9.

While Musk has amassed immense powers in the US government, arguably next only to Trump, he is not formally the head of Doge — the White House has said that Amy Gleason is in charge of Doge. Formally, Musk is a special government employee (SGE) who advises the president. As per rules, an SGE may only serve for a period of 130 days that would complete on July 9.

As Doge has just saved $150 billion till Thursday (April 10), Musk is way off the target that he set just last month — the target that was half of the original target.

Actual savings may be even less

Even though the savings of $150 billion are just 15 per cent of Musk’s target, the actual savings may not even be that much.

As per an analysis by The New York Times, Doge’s calculations have been flawed and continuously revised downward. Even after such downward revisions, investigations have found errors.

On some occasions, Doge has claimed cutting spendings that had been shut down as far back as under the George W Bush’s tenure (2001-09) and, on other occasions, it claimed to have cut the same spending multiple times or interpreted documents incorrectly to arrive at bloated figures, according to The Times.

In one case, Doge cancelled grants that had been already disbursed so while those grants stood cancelled formally, no money was saved because money had already been disbursed, as per The Times.

However, the Doge still claimed the grant’s cancellation as savings.

In other cases, the Doge did not understand how government contracts work and counted the ‘ceiling value’ of a contract instead of the actual money provided to the contractor, according to the newspaper.

In one case reported by the newspaper, Doge claimed to have saved $8.3 million in a contract, but $8.3 million was the ceiling value, which means that it was the upper limit of the money that could be spent on that contract. Actually, only $1.2 million were to be spent on the contract and, out of that, only $700,000 were saved as the rest of the money had already been disbursed.