Smoke & Mirrors: Musk Drastically Cuts DOGE's Savings Goal From $2 Trillion To $150 Billion
Musk has claimed DOGE’s efforts are “maximally transparent,” but the team published only around a third of the cuts they’ve made, making a more thorough analysis more difficult.
Multi-billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), slashed the department’s forecast of around $2 trillion dollars saved by cutting excess spending, fraud and federal waste, to now around a relatively meager $150 billion for the year.
In the final weeks before the 2024 presidential election, during one of Trump’s rallies in October, Musk floated the idea that DOGE would be able to cut approximately $2 trillion in fraud and waste, and then use the funds to help pay down the national debt.
“I think we could do at least $2 trillion,” Musk said at the time. “At the end of the day, you’re being taxed - all government spending is taxation. Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that.”
After Trump won the election, Musk then wavered on that $2 trillion promise. During a live interview in January, weeks before Trump took office, Musk said: “We’ll try for $2 trillion. I think that’s like the best-case outcome. I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting one.”
Musk would go on to revise that forecast again to around $1 trillion by year’s end, the Daily Caller notes.
“Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars,” Musk told Fox News’ in January. “Looked at in total federal spending, to drop the federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse … Which seems really quite achievable.”
Now this past week, Musk has greatly revised that number down to a relatively much smaller $150 billion from the federal budget - a far cry from around $2 trillion -over the fiscal year, running from the state of October this year to the end of September 2026.
“I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in ’26 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion. "[These cuts] will actually result in better services for the American people.”
It is unclear is Musk meant to say if this number was the final goal or what the department already found. A DOGE official told the New York Times the $1 trillion figure was still “the goal,” however.
The DOGE website currently says it has saved around $150 billion already.
In any event, DOGE has already been shown to have been fudging the numbers.
The WinePress News reported in February DOGE was already exacerbating its touted savings. At the time of that report, DOGE touted saving $55 billion but after an analysis by Bloomberg, the list contracts provided on the website actually only amounted to $16 billion. This was because DOGE in several instances accidently published incorrect figures and typos, but failed to correct the headline number.
Around that same time the Wall Street Journal’s analysis claimed that DOGE had saved even less than what Bloomberg earlier reported, and some of the contracts listed had already been paid for. The WSJ wrote: “More than a quarter of the contracts listed by DOGE were actually already paid, the Journal found, saving no money. For instance, DOGE listed $168,000 in savings for terminating a contract with HHS for an Anthony Fauci museum exhibit. It had already been fully paid.”
DOGE is reportedly doing the same thing still. Fortune reported on April 11th:
DOGE’s website has been plagued with errors and miscalculations, making it hard to know if the team’s top-line figure of $150 billion can be trusted.
According to DOGE’s website, the savings are a combination of “asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud, and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
However, the team has deleted several contracts from its wall of receipts after reports undermined some of their claims. In one case, DOGE had to revise its largest contract down from $8 billion to $8 million after the contract’s vendor explained that the $8 billion listed on its procurement record was likely a clerical error.
One of the largest savings highlighted on the DOGE “wall of receipts” is a $1.9 billion figure, attributed to the cancellation of a Treasury Department contract with Centennial Technologies. However, the company previously told the New York Times that the deal had already been scrapped during the Biden administration—long before DOGE existed. After media coverage, the savings claim was briefly taken down, according to ABC, but has since reappeared. (Centennial Technologies did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.)
In addition, DOGE staff quietly removed more than 1,000 contract cancellations from its records last month, wiping out about $4 billion in previously reported savings.
Musk has claimed DOGE’s efforts are “maximally transparent,” but the team published only around a third of the cuts they’ve made, making a more thorough analysis more difficult.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
As I have pointed out before, even if DOGE were to somehow genuinely cut $2 trillion in excess fraud and theft, the accrued interest to service the national debt is roughly $1 trillion every 100 days, marking around $3.5 trillion is just interest payments alone, leaving $1.5 trillion left over if DOGE cuts $2 trillion and if every cent is used to pay for that expense. Instead, a so-called $5,000 “dividend” check was touted; meaning it would more inflation because hardly anything (in relative terms) was and is being saved; but the idea has fizzled out.
Yet meanwhile Trump just recently announced a $1 trillion defense budget, the first-ever.
Meanwhile the Pentagon has failed to pass an audit in years, detailed earlier this year. Hey, here’s a novel concept: why don’t we severely audit that over-bloated department: there’s plenty of fraud and gross abuse going on there. But we know that is never going to happen.
Let’s be real here: cutting government waste and fraud sounds great, who wouldn’t want that? But DOGE isn’t it and was never about saving us money. And dare I ask, where are the names of these people who signed these contracts and received the money?
We live in a truly fascinating paradigm where we have so-called “patriots” (statists by another name) cheering for the government and multi-billionaire class to police themselves, and do their best Robin Hood cosplay and redisperse wealth to you and I. Now that’s some effective propaganda right there! "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, […]” (2 Peter 1:16).
Again, I must reiterate: DOGE is not cutting, it’s consolidating. They are just moving money around to fund other departments while others are being shortened.
In the short time Trump has been office, most of what he campaigned on has already fallen flat - no surprise to anyone who follows this site - as we’ve seen DOGE turn out to be hype; the tariffs have been a mess (by design) and have further isolated ourselves from the rest of the world; spending only increases; no Epstein and JFK files, no arrests; no end to the war in Ukraine, while continuing and accelerating old and new wars; all while at the same time we are rapidly seeing a further obstructing of free speech, a free press, and a right to peacefully assemble. And that’s just some of it.
Psalm 43:1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. [2] For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? [3] O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles. [4] Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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" . . . moving money around to fund other departments . . ."<----Modern day shell game. Cunning. Sleight of hand.
When a candidate is elected they say: When I am elected........... I will........ and then they fade into the background never keeping their promises except to those from whom THEY can profit from.
Once again we see this in operation...... one event distracts, while they do another while we are distracted.
William Casey, CIA Director 1981-1987
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
I wonder if the past 4 years were not used to find out all who will defy their NW(D)O by getting them to vote for Trump? Remember what Biden said "We will remember you Trump Voters"
The PSRRC / NW(D)O Elites will make sure of that, you can go to the Bank on it.
Do the DOGE dodge seems to be the new outlook, and they completed their distraction whatever that may be. God hates lying tongues.