DOGE is no more — and it barely cut federal spending

The Department of Government Effectiveness no longer exists – and it has barely begun its original mission of reducing federal spending.

On Sunday, Reuters reported that DOGE had disbanded and no longer operated as a single group within the federal government. Scott Kupar, who heads the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, later said DOGE’s goals remain anchored in federal agencies.

“The truth is that DOGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS,” Kupar wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “But the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: deregulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; reshaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen.”

Once a vaunted force within the Trump administration, the group gradually lost influence starting in June, when its architect Elon Musk traded insults and criticism with President Donald Trump in spectacular public fashion. Since then, the two men have taken small steps to reconnect. DOGE, however, never regained the freedom it previously had to issue layoff notices, terminate government contracts, and close agencies.

Ten months after DOGE’s creation, the group serves as an example of the Trump administration’s failure in its quest to cut government spending due to legal and political setbacks.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk created and led DOGE throughout the first half of the year, touting it as the vanguard of eliminating waste and saving taxpayer dollars. After hiring dozens of employees for DOGE, the Tesla CEO received the green light from the Trump administration and embarked on a cost-cutting campaign through the federal government.

The actual result was paltry: DOGE claims around $214 billion in savings, but experts have disputed the numbers and say they are overstated and riddled with inaccuracies, such as double counting. There is still no clear picture of the extent of the spending cuts.

Jessica Riedl, a new policy expert at the Brookings Institution, described the entire organization in a social media post as a “theater of spending cuts” that featured “a complete misunderstanding of the key drivers of the deficit.” She was referring to benefit programs that provide retirement and health care benefits to older adults: Social Security and Medicare.

Annual spending at the discretion of Congress totaled about 26% of the federal budget last year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“It’s hard to overstate the depth of DOGE’s failure,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, said in a social media post. He observed that overall government spending is expected to be higher in fiscal 2025 compared to last year.

Kupar told the New York Times in August that the federal government was laying off about 300,000 federal employees this year, or one in eight civilian employees. He attributed most of this to buybacks and a deferred resignation program implemented by DOGE. Some employees, however, have since been reintegrated into the federal workforce.

Although DOGE failed in its initial goals, Musk has not completely withdrawn from American politics. Musk, a billionaire in the making thanks to his recently approved salary, attended a dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman at the White House last week, on the sidelines of the US-Saudi Investment Forum.