Elon Musk has admitted his Department of Government Efficiency may only cut $150 billion in spending — just 15 percent of his original $1 trillion goal.
Musk told President Donald Trump’s cabinet the revised number in a meeting Thursday, back-tracking on his previous promises to cut $1 trillion in government spending by September 30, the end of the fiscal year.
However, a new analysis from The New York Times reveals that even Musk’s much-smaller goal likely isn’t feasible because DOGE has been inflating its progress with billion-dollar errors and making assumptions about future federal spending that isn’t set in stone.
DOGE continues to publicly report its savings on its website, labeling it the “Wall of Receipts.” The site, which was last updated Tuesday, is heavily error-ridden and shows a total of $150 billion in estimated savings, according to the Times.
Elon Musk has lowered the Department of Government Efficiency’s savings goals from $1 trillion to just $150 billion (Getty Images)
While DOGE has cleared up some mistakes — including entries that mistakenly triple-counted some savings or reported billion when they meant million — others still remain, the outlet reports.
These errors include a reported $1.9 billion in savings from a canceled IRS contract. But the contract they cite was actually canceled under former President Joe Biden.
Another error includes a touted $1.75 billion in savings from a supposedly canceled grant to a vaccine nonprofit, according to the Times. The nonprofit has reported they were already paid the grant in full, meaning DOGE saved nothing by canceling it.
Now, even groups that support Musk’s goal are saying they’re frustrated with DOGE.
“They’re just spinning their wheels, citing in many cases overstated or fake savings,” Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Times. “What’s most frustrating is that we agree with their goals. But we’re watching them flail at achieving them.”
Musk’s $1 trillion goal has been clearly impossible for a while. Last month, The New Yorker reported that DOGE would only save $245.8 billion a year if it fired every single federal worker outside the military or USPS.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, accompanied by U.S. President Donald Trump (R), when Trump signed an executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “workforce optimization initiative,” on February 11, 2025. (Getty Images)
Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office has been investigating DOGE since last month, according to Wired. Their audit is specifically targeting DOGE’s access to sensitive government data.
The audit comes after Congressional leaders requested it in light of “alarming” media reports of DOGE infiltrating federal systems, a congressional aide told Wired.
“The reports of untrained people rummaging around databases changing code, scraping data — who knows what they’re doing? — were pretty alarming,” the aide said.
