It’s easy to get excited about cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in government. After all, who doesn’t want a more efficient, effective government that spends our tax dollars wisely? But as much as trimming the fat sounds like a straightforward way to balance the budget, the reality is far more complicated. The recent experience of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) offers a clear example of why cutting waste alone won’t solve our fiscal challenges.
Big Promises, Big Ambitions
In early 2025, President Trump launched DOGE with a bold mission: to modernize federal technology and slash government waste on an unprecedented scale. Led by high-profile private sector figures like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, DOGE promised to save $1 trillion within just 10 months—a staggering goal that captured headlines and raised expectations.
With access to the levers of government and a mandate to “cut first, assess later,” DOGE aimed to reduce the federal workforce by up to 10% and eliminate programs deemed unnecessary, even proposing to shutter entire agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The approach was aggressive: firing personnel, canceling contracts, and dismantling operations, often without congressional approval.
The Reality of Savings
Despite these efforts, DOGE’s claims to have saved $215 billion were met with skepticism. Analysts found that many of the savings were overstated or misclassified. Some programs cited as cut were actually continued after court rulings, and some contracts DOGE claimed to have canceled had already expired under previous administrations. In other cases, accounting tricks created “paper savings” that didn’t translate into real budget reductions.
What’s more, the majority of DOGE’s savings came from cutting entire programs or contracts—often small ones—rather than rooting out actual waste, fraud, or abuse. For instance, 80% of the canceled grants were worth less than $1 million each but had disproportionate impacts on the communities and projects they supported.
On the workforce front, DOGE did manage a significant reduction, cutting about 271,000 federal jobs, or roughly 9%, mostly through voluntary buyouts. While this was the largest peacetime workforce reduction in decades, even these cuts represent only a small fraction of the federal budget. Experts estimate that a 10% workforce cut would save about $40 billion annually—a meaningful amount, but nowhere near DOGE’s trillion-dollar target. Over ten years those reductions could total $400 billion, which is less than 2% of the projected $24.4 trillion that will be added to the debt over that time.
There is evidence that some of the workforce cuts could have negative long-term fiscal consequences. For example, (DOGE) initiated massive cuts to the IRS in 2025, firing over 7,000 employees and planning to cut thousands more. These cuts, aimed at reducing waste, have led to a loss of 31% of revenue agents (auditors) by March 2025. Independent analysts have found that the losses in uncollected revenue will far exceed the salary savings from firing these workers. As entrepreneur Mark Cuban once put it, “This isn’t a business—it’s the U.S. economy. In a business, you cut to survive. In a government, if you cut the people who bring in the money or provide the foundation for growth, you aren’t saving—you’re defaulting.”
Why Cutting Waste Isn’t Enough
The fundamental challenge DOGE faced, and that every efficiency campaign faces, is that the biggest drivers of federal spending aren’t discretionary programs or personnel costs. They are mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare, along with interest on the national debt. These are governed by laws passed by Congress, and the executive branch has limited power to make unilateral deep cuts here.
DOGE’s focus on “waste, fraud, and abuse” created a misleading narrative that balancing the budget was mostly about eliminating inefficiencies. In truth, lasting fiscal reform demands hard choices and coordinated action between Congress and the presidency, particularly around Social Security and Medicare reforms and how government spending is matched with revenue.
What Can We Learn?
The story of DOGE reminds us that while cutting waste is necessary and important, it’s not a silver bullet. Efficiency efforts need to be paired with structural reforms and legislative action to truly tackle the deficit. Past reform efforts, like the Clinton Administration’s National Performance Review, succeeded in part because they worked closely with Congress and federal employees and embedded reforms into law—something DOGE largely bypassed.
In short, trimming government bureaucracy and cutting unnecessary programs can save money and improve operations, but don’t expect these actions alone to balance the federal budget. Addressing the underlying drivers of spending—and ensuring revenue keeps pace—are essential steps if we want a financially sustainable government.
