Musk's Cuts Cost Lives But Didn't Save Money
And what happens when a DOGE engineer finds out that government isn't that 'inefficient'...
As Elon Musk departs his official role in the Trump Administration, his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has claimed $175 billion in budgetary savings. There are many reasons to doubt this figure. Many of the cuts are unverifiable; the DOGE Tracker run by the journalist Judd Legum has been only able to confirm some $16.3 billion in cuts. In addition, the Partnership for Public Service, which studies the federal workforce, estimated that the firings, re-hirings, lost productivity, and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost more than $135 billion in 2025. No matter how you do the math, these cuts have been no more than a drop in the bucket of the federal government's annual budget, which was $6.8 trillion in 2024. Despite Musk's official departure, the White House has said that DOGE will continue its work.
The cuts have cost many lives too. On February 3, Musk posted: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." Dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development has caused destruction, misery, and death. USAID funds global health clinics from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The USAID dismantling affected PEPFAR, the program for HIV treatment for poor countries. While Musk has claimed that the program remains intact, doctors and public officials report that the cuts have thrown the program into chaos. The PEPFAR Impact Counter run by Boston University researchers has estimated that over 60,000 preventable deaths have happened as a result of PEPFAR aid being frozen. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof traveled to South Sudan earlier this year and spoke to health care workers who reported that children are dying as a result of the PEPFAR freeze.
But how is it possible that the DOGE cuts have been both destructive and a drop in the bucket for the federal budget? Many of the most effective interventions that the U.S. federal government makes cost little money, while much larger spending items are mandated by existing laws. PEPFAR, started by President George W. Bush in 2003, cost $7.1 billion in 2024. In some 20 years of existence, the PEPFAR Impact Counter estimated that it has saved 26 million lives and some 7 million babies were born without HIV.
By contrast, some 61 percent of the federal budget is mandatory spending, including social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as interest on debt payments. Musk fired thousands of workers at Social Security offices, but he didn't tinker with the checks that seniors get each month. Musk could get away with illegally dismantling USAID, but would not dare touch U.S. citizens' Social Security benefits.
Musk disagreed with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cuts Medicaid and gives huge tax breaks to the wealthy while exploding the budget deficit. Yet, both Trump and Musk miss what the problem is at the heart of the expanding budget deficit: the wealthy pay less of a percentage of their income in taxes than the middle class. The U.S. taxes things like capital gains and business gains at lower rates than income, and wealthier households take greater advantage of tax breaks such as the mortgage interest deduction. The Yale Budget Lab estimated that 95 percent of tax filers in the top tax bracket pay below their statutory tax rate, while 76 percent of filers in the bottom tax bracket pay their statutory tax rate. The Budget Lab reimagined tax brackets with fewer perks for high-income households, and found that the highest bracket could generate an additional $1.1 trillion in revenue per year.
Both Musk and Trump have at times paid very little or nothing in federal income taxes. According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018. In 2021, he said he paid $11 billion after stock trades, which sounds like a lot except that his net worth is around $386 billion. A 2020 New York Times investigation revealed that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017; during the 2016 campaign he called tax avoidance "smart."
On May 30, Musk and Trump appeared at the White House together and tried to smooth over any differences between them. After their press conference, the White House posted on X, "The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) is VICTORIOUS in slashing waste, fraud, and abuse! Thank you, @ElonMusk." But DOGE didn't find much of that. One DOGE employee named Sahil Lavingia learned this truism up close at the Department of Veterans Affairs. "The government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest," the engineer told Fast Company in an interview. Soon after the interview was published, he was fired.
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very disappointing election..Is PiS the polish name for Law and Justice? so awful that the Trump administration endorsed the right wing populist....Do you think this election will affect Poland's support for Ukraine?