Although Elon Musk leaves a legacy of mass cuts to government programs that left many members of Washington, DC, established, he could not achieve all the high objectives he established at the beginning of his time as head of the Government's efficiency department.
According to an update of May 26 on the Doge website, the initiative has saved an estimate of $ 175 billion through assets sales, contract cancellations, repression of fraud payments and other expenses of expenses. That translates into approximately $ 1,087 in savings per taxpayer.
Although significant, the $ 175 billion is far from the original $ 2 billion, almost a third of the total expenditure of the federal government, which the musk originally proposed to cut.
So what went wrong?
Richard Stern, an expert in economics policies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that Dege “overestimated the legal flexibility they would have, and the agencies would have, to comply with that.”
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Although Elon Musk leaves a legacy of mass cuts to government programs that left many members of Washington, DC, enraged, he could not achieve all the high objectives he proposed at the beginning of his time as head of the Government's efficiency department. (AP/EVAN VUCCI AND AP Photo/ETIENNE LAURENT, ARCHIVE)
From the beginning, Dege was beaten not only with a negative press tsunami and indignant democratic legislators, but also a series of demands, which border him in prolonged legal battles.
This, together with the reality of most of the main final cuts that require the approval of the Congress to carry out, relegated Doge's impact on cutting the edges of the great programs and agencies that would probably have liked to eliminate completely.
Despite Musk's efforts, in many cases, agencies such as the consumer financial protection office could only be reduced and limited, while total elimination requires an act of Congress.
Last week, the judge of the United States District Court, Beryl Howell, blocked the dismantling of the Trump Administration of the United States Peace Institute, writing in a ruling that the elimination of the members of its Board and the acquisition of their headquarters by Doge members are actions that are “null and null”.
Stern said that “at the end of the day, they were a bit excessive about the amount of legal authority that would finally be able to make these many cuts.”
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A federal judge has blocked Doge's efforts to dismantle the United States Peace Institute (USIP), whose building is shown in this March 2025 archive photo. (Getty images)
Where Stern believes that Dege can have the greatest impact is to focus on the aspects of information collection and complainants of his mission.
“You can divide Doge into two very large cubes,” he postulated. “The first large cube, which is the one that has not been done, is to make large cuts of expenses directly. I think the second was to identify which cuts could be done.”
“The original plan was that Dege could enter and do both things that could find a specific expense to cut … and then the other part of that was to identify this information and make public that people did not have that would allow really designed expenses cuts to come from Congress,” he explained.
Although less striking, Stern believes that here is where Doge, in the future, can have its greatest impact.
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Elon Musk, Executive Director of Tesla Inc., arrives at the Conservative Conference of Political Action (CPAC) in the National Port, Maryland, on Thursday, February 20, 2025. The Constitution of Conservative Political Action, launched in 1974, brings together conservative organizations, elected leaders and activists. Photographer: Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg through Getty Images (Getty)
“There are many Think Tanks, including heritage, which have gathered lists for a long time in terms of policies that we do not believe they are good, where spending could be reduced. But I think nobody has a window is the really deep mechanics of how many of these programs work. Explained.
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“Then, Dege, being in the administration, has been and continues in a position to make that audience, to put into account that in a way that almost no one was in a position to do,” Stern continued. “That can feed the termination bills and Congress cuts the way. But some administrator should really do it. And Dege is finally doing that.”
Greg Norman of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
