Musk’s DOGE Cuts $200 Billion in First 100 Days, But Can It Keep Going?

Elon Musk’s ambitious government efficiency initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is already making a major impact just 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term claiming it has slashed $200 billion in wasteful federal spending. But with Musk stepping back and Congress dragging its feet, the program’s long-term success hangs in the balance.

So far, DOGE has:

• Terminated 8,500 federal contracts, saving $160 billion

• Cancelled nearly 10,000 federal grants, freeing up $33 billion

• Axed 650 federal leases, netting $311 million in savings

Musk, appointed as a “special government employee” by Trump, laid out a goal to cut $1 trillion from the bloated federal budget. While much of the $200 billion saved involves long-term spending commitments, DOGE has already proven one thing: when Washington is forced to act like a business, massive inefficiencies are exposed and eliminated.

Some of the most outrageous cuts DOGE has made include:

• $3 billion to Family Endeavors for housing unaccompanied minors — a program abused under Biden that endangered children and encouraged human trafficking

• $1.9 billion IRS tech contract canceled before a single dollar was spent

• $2.6 billion USAID grant for the “Immunization Agenda 2030,” cut after nearly $1 billion was already flushed away

• Half a billion in grants to Heluna Health, a pass-through nonprofit that ballooned from receiving millions to billions during the pandemic

But this is more than just a spreadsheet exercise. DOGE is changing the way D.C. thinks or rather, forcing it to think. Musk’s team, operating under the renamed U.S. DOGE Service (once a liberal tech outpost under Obama), has pushed departments to justify every dollar, cross-check expenditures, and purge crony contracts that have gone unchecked for decades.

Still, the momentum may be stalling.

Musk is expected to divert more time back to Tesla and SpaceX soon. His “Fork in the Road” buyouts modeled after his Twitter overhaul failed to thin the federal workforce significantly, with courts and unions reinstating many who were laid off. And personnel rules favoring entrenched bureaucrats mean that junior, often cheaper, staff are let go while senior lifers keep collecting inflated salaries.

There’s a deeper problem Congress.

If the Republican-led Senate doesn’t take DOGE’s cuts seriously, they’ll amount to little more than a publicity stunt. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the GOP’s current budget plan would add $5.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade a plan worse than Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

Trump and Musk have made the case: wasteful spending is a national security issue. Yet the GOP is still pushing bloated military budgets and tax cuts without matching spending reforms. While they’ve rightly slashed a few billion from Democrat vanity projects like “urban affairs,” they’re also adding hundreds of billions elsewhere.

If Republicans want to be taken seriously on the deficit, they need to finish what Musk started:

• Reform food stamps to end abuse on junk food and corner stores

• Abolish the $2 billion-a-year Job Corps

• Clean up Social Security Disability fraud

• End taxpayer funding for worthless “social science” projects

Americans backed DOGE because they’re fed up with bureaucratic waste and runaway spending. But unless Congress follows through, even the best efforts from Trump and Musk could be drowned in the swamp they’re trying to drain.

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