| | | How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?
The group’s biggest claims were largely incorrect, a New York Times analysis found. And its many smaller cuts added up to few savings.
By Emily Badger, David A. Fahrenthold Alicia Parlapiano and Margot Sanger-Katz
The reporters, who have been examining DOGE’s work all year, reviewed hundreds of federal records and interviewed funding experts and recipients.
Dec. 23, 2025
Paywall free link: nytimes.com
brief excerpt:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government — slashing billion-dollar contracts, canceling thousands of grants and pushing out civil servants.
But the group did not do what Mr. Musk said it would: reduce federal spending by $1 trillion before October. On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up.
How is that possible?
One big reason, according to a New York Times analysis: Many of the largest savings that DOGE claimed turned out to be wrong. And while the group did make thousands of smaller cuts, jolting foreign aid recipients, American small businesses and local service providers, those amounted to little in the scale of the federal budget.
In DOGE’s published list of canceled contracts and grants, for instance, the 13 largest were all incorrect.
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