Was DOGE all for nothing? Here are the receipts

A whole lot of nothing. The government shut down may lead to mass layoffs that move the dial further? Not what Chuck had in mind.

Was DOGE all for nothing? Here are the receipts

The U.S. government's 2025 fiscal year is done — turns out Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency didn't break a cycle of increased spending

By Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Quartz Media

Updated Thursday 2:51 PM

In the earliest days of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk vowed to take an Argentina-sized chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy and slash $2 trillion in government spending.

Musk's target savings amount drastically shrank over time. Soon, the Department of Government Efficiency cut its target by half and settled on $1 trillion. It later set its sights even lower: $150 billion.

Now, after the end of the 2025 fiscal year, it turns out DOGE didn't really move the needle.

The U.S. government spent $6.6 trillion in the fiscal year spanning Oct. 2024 through the end of August, according to available Treasury Department data. Compared to the prior fiscal year, the U.S. government spent $376 billion more in 2025, or a 6% increase. In other words, DOGE didn't succeed in breaking the cycle of growing government spending,

For its part, DOGE has claimed to recoup $214 billion in savings through a blend of reductions in the federal workforce and agency lease cancellations. The amount, though, is unverified. It includes inaccurate information and overstated figures, NPR reported earlier in March.

Federal spending usually increases gradually year after year for both defense and non-defense programs. That's typically been the case without factoring in the enormous government intervention during the pandemic. It prompted a $6 trillion spending blitz undertaken by both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Most of the aforementioned government spending is on autopilot. Just over a third of it flows to Social Security and Medicare, which channels retirement and health benefits for mainly elderly Americans, a portion that's steadily growing due to an aging population and rising cost of providing healthcare. About a quarter of the federal budget is on the table when Congress debates and passes annual funding bills.

The U.S. deficit — or the gap between what the governments collects in taxes and spends — stood at $1.8 trillion for the 2025 fiscal year, per the Congressional Budget Office. That level is unchanged from the prior year and a slight uptick from fiscal year 2023.