DOGe is Dead: What Did It Actually Save?
 

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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly dissolved ahead of schedule, having achieved—even by its own estimates—only a fraction of the savings it initially sought.

By Hugh Cameron

Last week, Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), told Reuters that DOGE "doesn’t exist" and will no longer function as a "centralized entity," despite the fact that eight months remain on the 18-month agenda outlined by the White House on January 20.

Newsweek contacted the White House outside of regular hours for comment.

What Did DOGE Do?

From creation to dissolution, the advisory department went through the D.C. bureaucracy at speed, cutting jobs and contracts in an effort to maximize productivity, slash wasteful spending and root out fraud in federal outlays.

According to its website, DOGE terminated 13,440 contracts, 15,887 grants and 264 leases—estimates that have fluctuated dramatically over its 10-month existence.

DOGE was also the driving force behind many of the headcount reductions made within the federal government this year. In a blog post on Friday, OPM Director Kupor said the government had hired around 68,000 people in 2025, with some 317,000 employees having departed.

What Did DOGE Save?

In October 2024, DOGE’s soon-to-be frontman Elon Musk said that he could help to trim "at least $2 trillion" from the federal government budget, later halving this target to a more modest $1 trillion ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

As of November 24, DOGE’s website says the department has secured $214 billion in savings, equivalent to $1,329.19 per taxpayer. This, it says, has come through 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."

Many of these reported savings were secured shortly following its launch, and were sizable enough to spark discussion of a "DOGE Dividend"—a direct payment to taxpayers and funded with cost-reductions—which received the tacit endorsement of both Musk and President Trump, and broad support from surveyed voters.

However, these checks never came, and erroneous accounting on DOGE’s "Wall of Receipts" has left many estimating that the true savings achieved over the past 10 months fall significantly shy of both the department’s own figures and its original targets.

DOGE several times listed canceled contracts at vastly exaggerated values—once claiming to have cut an $8 billion contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that was actually worth $8 million—inflating the savings it said it was achieving. These mistakes became commonplace, one CBS News analysis from August estimating that DOGE was overstating savings from some of the largest cuts by as much as 97 percent.

In February, when DOGE’s savings tally stood at $55 billion, former Labor Department Chief Economist Betsy Stevenson said the real figure was likely between $1 and $7 billion. In early August, Politico analyzed DOGE’s claim that it had saved taxpayers $52.8 billion through canceled contracts. However, of the $32.7 billion in contract savings the outlet could verify, it said the true number was closer to $1.4 billion.

And beyond inflated savings, the drastic cuts enacted by DOGE may have themselves cost the government money, further reducing the net savings achieved.

In April, the Partnership for Public Service—a nonpartisan advocacy group focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the federal government—found DOGE’s actions had cost taxpayers around $135 billion in its first 100 days through the loss of federal worker productivity, repeated fire-and-rehire cycles and paid leave.

This figure does not account for the costs of defending the many lawsuits filed against DOGE, nor any potential decline in tax collections caused by cuts to IRS personnel.

DOGE pledged a $1 trillion overhaul of the federal government, but in the end delivered a fraction of this while disrupting key government operations. Had it stayed on track with even Musk’s lower benchmark, savings should have averaged $55.6 billion per month or $555.56 billion total in the 10 months since its inception.

But despite its dissolution, the administration has said it will continue to operate with DOGE’s core agenda in mind, and according to Reuters, the OPM has assumed many of DOGE's functions, while many departing staff are expected to take on positions with other administration departments.