Before the Department of Government Efficiency was released to the federal government, President Trump and Elon Musk promised Americans significant savings, and even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes. Now, Mr. Musk has said without giving specifics that DOGE is probably only going to save taxpayers $150 billion as he gets ready to resign from his presidential mandate to reduce bureaucratic waste.
That is less than 8% of the $2 trillion in savings he first promised, around 15% of the $1 trillion he vowed to preserve, and a small portion of the over $7 trillion the federal government spent in the fiscal year 2024.
There is enough evidence of the mistakes and obfuscations that underlie DOGE’s savings claims. The expenses Mr. Musk incurred by bringing what Mr. Trump referred to as a “hatchet” to the government, as well as the ensuing building seizures, agency lockouts, and firings that primarily ended up in court, are less well known.
Using budget data, the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that does research on the federal workforce, has estimated that the cost of firings, rehirings, lost productivity, and paid leave for thousands of employees would exceed $135 billion this fiscal year. According to data from Yale University’s Budget Lab, the Internal income Service would lose over $8.5 billion in income in 2026 alone if 22,000 workers were to leave due to DOGE. An estimated 32,000 departures are anticipated in total.
The expense to taxpayers of defending DOGE’s actions in court is not included in any of these estimations. At least 30 of the roughly 200 lawsuits and appeals pertaining to Mr. Trump’s agenda include the agency.
Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said that Musk is not only greatly exaggerating the amount of money he has saved, but he is also failing to account for the exponentially more waste that he is producing. “The American people will bear the consequences of his actions for many years to come.”
It did not have to be this way, according to Mr. Stier and other government workforce specialists. The majority of Americans favor cutting the federal workforce, and Mr. Musk has a legal blueprint for doing so because to federal law and past government shutdowns. However, after acquiring Twitter in 2022, Mr. Musk made the same snap decisions and used blunt force to drastically reduce the company’s workforce.
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In February, the Internal Revenue Service facility in Washington. An estimated $8.5 billion in income would be lost in 2026 alone if up to 22,000 of the agency’s workers leave. Give credit… For The New York Times, Haiyun Jiang
Jeri Buchholz, who oversaw recruiting and firing at seven federal organizations, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and NASA, said, “The law is clear.” Buchholz has over thirty years of experience in public service. “They can do all the things they are currently doing, but they can’t do them the way they’re doing them. They can either start again and do it correctly, or they may be in court for forever.”
White House spokesperson Harrison W. Fields supported DOGE’s cutbacks, describing the $150 billion the government had saved as “monumental and historic.”
When considering the costs of doing nothing, he said, “it’s important to realize that doing nothing has a cost, too, and these so-called experts and groups are conveniently absent.”
“Every cut has been made to make the government more efficient and not to be a burden to the American people or cut any critical resources or programs they rely on,” he stated when discussing the I.R.S.
According to the most recent data, at least 12% of the 2.4 million civilian workers in the federal workforce have been targeted by the DOGE cutbacks. However, there is a significant discrepancy between DOGE’s anticipated reductions and the actual number of departures.
According to data from the Office of Personnel Management, buyouts and firings originally reduced the workforce by around 100,000 employees, which is thousands lower than the number of individuals who normally retire in a year. Most of those 100,000 workers were rehired at full pay after judges declared their firings unlawful, and some were rehired after Mr. Musk claimed DOGE had “accidentally” fired employees who were protecting nuclear weapons, ensuring aviation safety, and fighting Ebola and bird flu.
In response to court orders to reinstate the workers, the government placed them on paid leave, which meant that taxpayers would pay for their rehire as well as their paychecks while they were at home.
The entire staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fighting HIV in mothers and children worldwide was destroyed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ 10,000 layoffs. Two public health doctors said in an interview that they were taken by surprise since the team’s efforts were consistently supported by both parties. They said that they wanted to go back to work but were unsure of whom to approach about their impending firing on June 2.
The latest attempt by an American president to reduce the government bureaucracy, which the majority of Americans claim they want, has been tarnished by Mr. Musk’s tactics. In interviews and town halls with Congress, even Trump supporters have expressed their fatigue with Musk’s bloodletting. According to a study conducted this month, 60% of respondents disapproved of Mr. Musk and 58% disapproved of the way he was managing DOGE’s operations.
“Mistakes will be made by us.”
With the subject line “Fork in the Road,” the Office of Personnel Management issued a now-famous email to almost two million federal employees a week after Mr. Trump was sworn in. They were informed that they would either risk being fired later or quit and continue to be paid until September.
Concern about whether DOGE had the legal right to pay employees until September was stoked by the communication. Federal employee unions filed a lawsuit, but the scheme was approved by the court. Approximately 3 percent, or 75,000 individuals, departed. The government will continue to pay their wages until the autumn if it doesn’t back out of its promise.
In February, Mr. Musk informed cabinet members, “We will make mistakes.” Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
The bulk buyout did neither favor highly rated performers nor separate important occupations from nonessential ones, principles that guided furloughs during earlier federal shutdowns. Consequently, the government ended up seeking to reverse an outflow of persons in important jobs.
In February, Mr. Musk informed cabinet members, “We will make mistakes.” Mr. Musk learned that “one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention” after boasting that he was putting the US Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper,” a move that a court subsequently determined violated the Constitution. However, it was untrue that he had quickly fixed the harm.
The impact of the buyouts on initiatives to protect and update the country’s nuclear weapons is shown separately by a New York Times investigation into cutbacks to the National Nuclear Security Administration. At least 27 engineers, 13 program or project analysts, 12 program or project managers, and five physicists or scientists were among the more than 130 individuals who were let go or accepted DOGE’s offer to resign.
Six of these workers were in the agency unit that builds reactors for nuclear submarines, and four were experts in the safe transportation of nuclear materials.
Jill Hruby, who oversaw the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Biden administration, said, “Those are such hard jobs to fill, because people could make as much or more money working for the plant or laboratory itself.”
A number of the nuclear safety team members were hired by the government contractors they previously oversaw. Mr. Stier claims that a disproportionate number of specialists who are highly sought after by the commercial sector have left government.
“Many of the top students in the class are succeeding because they have a strong sense of purpose,” he said. But for someone with alternatives, it’s simpler to say, ‘This is ridiculous, I’m not going to do this anymore,’ and go on.
“Deliberate Waste of Money”
The Office of Personnel Management targeted all 220,000 federal probationary workers in mid-February. Probationary employees are recent hires or freshly promoted professionals who have less worker rights during their one- to two-year trial term. Among them were a group of younger, tech-savvy workers who were expensively recruited to take the place of a wave of baby boomer retirement. The cost of hiring and training them ranges from over $1 million for an expert spy to around $10,000 for an administrative worker.
Kevin Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer and attorney who represents some of the sacked employees, said, “This is the equivalent of a major-league baseball team firing all of its minor-league players.” “A significant sum of money is being purposefully squandered.”
By March 13, a federal court in Maryland declared that the layoffs were unlawful and ordered the agencies to rehire the approximately 24,000 probationary employees across almost 20 agencies. However, the government appealed, and the legal battle is still ongoing. In a long decision, Judge James K. Bredar of the Federal District Court in Maryland said that probationary workers are legally only allowed to be dismissed for reason, usually for poor performance.
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Last month, the Treasury Department was in Washington. A federal court in Maryland declared that it was unlawful to fire probationary employees and mandated that agencies, including 7,600 Treasury employees, rehire them temporarily. Give credit… The New York Times’ Jason Andrew
According to court documents, he directed the government to recall the dismissed employees, including 7,600 from the Treasury Department, 5,700 from the Agriculture Department, and over 3,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, the government placed them on paid leave, where they receive an average of $106,000 a year in salary while they wait in limbo.
The government lost thousands of dollars for every probationary employee that DOGE wasted on hiring incentives, security clearances, training, and recruitment—investments that are typically recovered over several years of service. In one instance, after being restored and placed on paid leave, a probationary employee who had been dismissed by the Department of Health and Human Services was given a wage increase.
Following several aircraft disasters, including one in January that killed 67 people in Washington, the government let off almost 400 probationary employees at the Federal Aviation government. Aviation safety aids and maintenance mechanics were among those let off.
previous month, the C.I.A. revealed that some officers who had been employed within the previous two years had been called to a site outside of the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters and requested to turn up their credentials to security guards. Approximately 80 cops were fired.
The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, said that the cost of obtaining a C.I.A. recruit’s security clearance and specialized training was $400,000.
Creating Pain
The spectacle surrounding the dismissals, which included Mr. Musk brandishing a chainsaw during a visit at a conservative political gathering, implies that the firings are also intended to inflict pain on a bureaucracy that Mr. Trump views as a subversive “deep state.”
Russell T. Vought, now head of the Office of Management and Budget, established it as a goal for government workers. At a conservative event in 2023, Mr. Vought said, “We want them to not want to go to work when they wake up in the morning, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
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In February, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Mr. Musk was seen onstage with a chainsaw. Give credit… The New York Times/Eric Lee
Mr. Stier and Ms. Buchholz stress that change is necessary since the government is ineffective. However, DOGE has harmed the government’s ability to hire young, skilled professionals to spearhead a modernization by “gleefully torturing people,” according to Ms. Buchholz.
According to Ms. Buchholz, “this nation has historically had an independent public service that attracts people focused on service to Americans.” “However, the type of service provided by political appointees, who are appointed by the president, is valued by this administration.”
Eileen Sullivan, Andrew Duehren, Sharon LaFraniere, Minho Kim, Julie Tate, Zach Montague, and Adam Goldman from Washington contributed to the reporting. Research was supplied by Kitty Bennett.
Elizabeth Williamson is a Washington-based feature writer for The Times. She has worked as a journalist on three continents for thirty years.