It’s not yet clear if Elon Musk’s government efficiency commission will actually be efficient. What it definitely has been is relentless.
The so-called DOGE commission has begun to upload a list of everything it says it has excised from the federal budget. Barely a month into its mission, the group says it has already produced “savings” amounting to billions of taxpayer dollars, mostly through canceled or renegotiated contracts. Those range from inexpensive news service subscriptions to multimillion-dollar training programs and other contracted services Musk has axed.
Yahoo Finance analyzed 1,127 records posted on doge.gov as of February 19. We didn’t audit or validate each claimed action, but we grouped them by agency to get a picture of where Musk’s commission has focused first and what sorts of things it has gone after.
Those 1,127 records covered actions at 39 agencies, including several highly publicized targets of the Trump-Musk jackhammer. There are roughly 400 federal agencies, some huge and some tiny, so DOGE is barely getting its pencils sharpened.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has endured the deepest cuts to date, totaling $6.5 billion, according to DOGE records. Next is the Department of Education, source of $502 million in cuts, followed by the Social Security Administration, at $232 million. Other agencies with more than $100 million in cuts include the General Services Administration, plus the departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Commerce.
It’s not clear what “savings” actually means in DOGEspeak. Most of the actions appear to involve money Congress authorized and appropriated and the executive branch then allotted through signed contracts the Trump administration has now rescinded.
The DOGE data links to many contract summaries indicating the spending in question often takes place over several years. Under most contracts, the purchaser pays in installments rather than putting up all the money at once. There’s no time frame for the money DOGE characterizes as “savings,” but it appears that the spending DOGE is referring to would have stretched over months or years.
Sizable mistakes have already materialized in the DOGE record keeping. The New York Times analyzed one canceled contract the DOGE site initially listed with a value of $8 billion. That was off by three zeros; the actual value was only $8 million. The mistake could have been a simple data-entry error, but DOGE still seems to have used the $8 billion figure when tallying what it says are its total savings to date—$55 billion.
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Since Yahoo Finance began accessing the DOGE data on February 19, some of the figures in various entries have changed, and we’ve subsequently updated our summaries. The total value of all the line-item cost-cutting on the DOGE site is far less than the $55 billion it claims in total savings. The claimed savings in the 1,127 posted contract actions adds up to about $8.5 billion, and again, that may be spread over a time period of years. A much smaller set of savings from real estate actions totals $145 million. DOGE provides less information about the real estate savings than it does about contracts.
These itemized savings don’t include any layoffs, buyouts, or other reductions in the federal workforce, which are likely to be substantial if Musk gets his way. Some 75,000 federal workers appear to have accepted buyouts. The Trump administration is trying to ditch another 200,000 “probationary” workers who have been on the job for less than a year. Thousands of other workers at USAID and other agencies wait in limbo as their job functions have been suspended pending reviews or, who knows, maybe a visit from DOGE.
Meanwhile, the rapidly shrinking federal workforce is becoming a nationwide economic concern. Moody’s Analytics now forecasts a “mild recession” in the Washington, D.C., area due to the disappearance of at least 100,000 fairly well-paying government jobs. Torsten Sløk, chief economist for private equity firm Apollo, Yahoo’s owner, said one of the key questions for investors now is whether DOGE-related firings could cause an economy-wide recession.
A rally at Health and Human Services headquarters to protest the policies of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/John McDonnell) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Many lawsuits are underway challenging the cuts Trump is ordering by executive action, since Congress, not the executive branch, has constitutional authority to approve or eliminate spending. Republicans who control Congress have been quiescent so far, but that could change as Trump’s cuts begin to cause pain among constituents in their own states and districts.
It’s another question altogether whether canceling contracts, selling real estate, and axing bureaucrats amounts to “savings” or recklessness. Much federal spending goes directly to citizens in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans benefits. Another huge chunk goes to defense, with much smaller amounts dedicated to essentials such as roads and bridges. All foreign aid combined is just 1% of federal spending. Total compensation for some 3 million federal workers, excluding the uniformed military, is about $270 billion, or just 4% of all federal spending.
Private-sector companies cut costs all the time. If cost-cutting eliminates unproductive or redundant activities, it can enhance performance. But some cost-cutting sprees go too far, paring or eliminating essential functions.
Speed cutting: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk at the White House. (Photo/Alex Brandon) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
The verdict comes when investors assess whether financial performance has improved or declined, bidding up winning stocks and selling the losers.
There’s no “stock,” per se, in the federal government, but there are still auditors who assess the government’s performance at agencies such as the Government Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and each department’s own oversight division. Trump has already been going after some of them, firing 17 inspectors general at agencies such as USAID and the Education Department.
Those are the very people who would assess the sort of information Musk’s commission is publishing now and report on whether it’s accurate. It may turn out that the one agency nobody ever probes during Trump’s second term is DOGE itself.
Editor’s note: This story originally described contract values posted on the DOGE web site as “savings.” We’ve updated the story with new data that indicates the DOGE “savings” are less than the total value of contracts.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.
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