On Sept. 15 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report critical of the wasteful spending by Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). According to these findings, in 2025 DOGE wasted $9.5 billion paying federal workers not to work. At the time, DOGE officials promised to cut the federal budget by $2 trillion and to slash the federal workforce with forced early retirements, resignations, and mass firings. Indeed, 12% of the federal civilian workforce left, but despite the brutal cuts, both the federal budget and the federal debt continued to grow.
Critics say that the Trump administration spent billions to force people out of the government, but that this process pushed out the most experienced people [a typical corporate account’s “downsizing” hatchet-job on those with the higher salaries—ed.]. A separate report by the Partnership for Public Service found that 20,000 of those federal jobs have since been filled by people with no experience. The federal government currently has recruiting drives to fill vacant positions, especially those requiring legal and technical skills.
On August 6 the GAO released a separate report, which was an audit of the claimed savings listed on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts". This GAO audit found that nearly 2,000 “terminated” contracts were never terminated; 108 terminated leases were terminated under the previous administration with no involvement of DOGE; claims of savings with no documentation or attempt to identify where these savings could be found; and some claims of savings had been removed from the list on its website. Before the GAO released this report, it sent a copy to DOGE in order to offer DOGE the opportunity to respond or correct any errors. DOGE made no attempt to challenge any of the GAO findings.
Wikipedia, cites CBS citing a 2025 analysis by Partnership for Public Service (PSP), a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce, DOGE is estimated to have cost taxpayers over $135 billion, due to productivity losses, paid leave, and the costs associated with dismissing and re-hiring employees. Additionally, it has generated over $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government. In June 2025 the Washington Post interviewed three dozen federal workers from 19 federal agencies, all of whom could cite numerous examples and “horror stories” about how DOGE made their jobs more inefficient and caused more red tape.
