Why DOGE Failed
Elon Musk rode into Washington, D.C., with a chainsaw and a big promise: He would cut “at least $2 trillion” in government spending.
Less than four months after President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Musk is now reportedly scaling back his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the meme-inspired project that Trump authorized to implement Musk’s vision for a leaner, more affordable federal government. Officially, DOGE claims to have cut $170 billion in government spending—though there are some doubts about the validity of that figure—mostly by firing bureaucrats and canceling some pretty silly contracts.
Libertarians and other advocates for limited government have plenty of reasons to applaud those cuts. Given the incentives of federal workers and the tendency of government to only ever get bigger, it’s possible to regard DOGE’s work as a “smashing success”—as Reason‘s Christian Britchgi termed it last month. And even though Musk is on his way out, DOGE’s efforts will continue (reportedly, the new boss plans to target some of the staggering levels of waste in the Pentagon, which would be a very worthwhile project).
Still, $170 billion is plainly not $2 trillion. Why did Musk fall so far short of his budget-cutting goal? Reason asked seven budget policy experts to answer that question, and their answers fell broadly into three categories.
Refusing To Touch Entitlement Spending
“I think they missed a tremendous opportunity,” said Veronique de Rugy, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “DOGE’s top priority should have been to target improper payments and fraud in entitlement programs—particularly Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare.”
There’s potential for some huge savings in those areas. The $101.4 billion of improper payments made by Medicare and Medicaid in 2023 accounted for 40 percent of all improper payments across the entire government that year, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“It is insane not to have started there. Given DOGE’s comparative advantage in data analytics and [information technology], this is where it can have the greatest impact,” said de Rugy. “Cracking down on this waste isn’t just about saving money; it’s about restoring integrity to safety-net programs and protecting taxpayers. And if fixing this problem is not quintessential ‘efficiency,’ what is?”
“Cutting $1 or $2 trillion was never feasible in the first place when 75 percent of spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest [payments on the national debt]—nearly all of which was taken off the table by Trump,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former Senate budget staffer.
Trump campaigned on a promise not to touch So
Article from Reason.com
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