Many posts have discussed federal deficits and the federal debt. Like previous efforts to reduce the deficit by cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse," DOGE was a failure.
The promise to save trillions of dollars was ultimately doomed by the reality that most federal spending was off limits to DOGE. Roughly two-thirds of all federal spending goes to five items (Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest) that Trump either promised not to cut, or in the case of interest, cannot directly reduce. Attempts by DOGE to scale back Social Security customer service spending as well as assistance at veterans’ hospitals were largely abandoned in the face of a steep backlash. Even much of the remaining one-third of federal spending consists of programs that Trump voters generally support, such as infrastructure, border security, farm subsidies, and law enforcement. Ultimately, DOGE was left to slash cultural totems that benefit MAGA enemies: aid to Africa, DEI contracts, Politico subscriptions, and government employees. And while the potential savings from these expenditures look like a lot of money for a typical family, they represent budget dust in the context of a $7 trillion federal budget.
Because real waste exists in the federal budget, DOGE represents a colossal missed opportunity. After all, Washington has a moral obligation to eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending in order to minimize the necessary cuts to priority programs. OMB estimates that $191 billion annually is lost to payment errors, which overwhelmingly take place within Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and earned income tax credit payments. Moreover, Washington is plagued with dozens of overlapping programs in areas such as education, economic development, and job training. And the Defense Department has a long record of losing tens of billions of dollars in contract cost overruns.
These examples of wasteful spending are easy to identify yet quite difficult to fix. Cleaning up such waste often involves completely overhauling countless government computer systems, developing new oversight controls (without unduly paralyzing the distribution of legitimate benefits), and coordinating with state governments that share in the administration of key programs. Overhauling these practices across hundreds of federal programs is tedious, complicated, and thankless—which is why it occurs so rarely. Lawmakers will hold hearings and press conferences blasting government waste, yet few are willing to invest significant resources into, for example, reducing Medicaid payment errors. DOGE could have focused on such activities—especially given its leaders’ background in computing technology—yet it seemed to lack the required attention span. Trump and Musk instead prioritized headline-grabbing gimmicks such as demanding a war on “millions” of fraudulent Social Security payments that did not actually exist.
