DOGE Promised $2 Trillion in Savings. A Year Later, Musk Says It Was "Somewhat Successful."

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Elon Musk set a target of $2 trillion in savings. He said it clearly, repeatedly, with the confidence of a man who has never had to justify a number to anyone. One year later, the DOGE website claims $215 billion in savings through job cuts, contract cancellations, lease terminations, and grant rescissions. That's roughly 10 cents on the dollar of what was promised. And even that $215 billion figure is disputed — because the methodology DOGE uses to calculate "savings" has never been independently verified, the accounting excludes costs created by the chaos of the cuts themselves, and agencies are quietly spending money to undo what DOGE did. In December 2025, in an interview with conservative influencer Katie Miller, Musk said his DOGE efforts were only "somewhat successful" and that he would not do it again.

They Fired People and Are Now Paying Them to Come Back.

The General Services Administration — which manages federal buildings and workplaces — slashed its headquarters staff by 79%, its portfolio managers by 65%, and its facilities managers by 35%. The result was immediate institutional collapse. One hundred thirty-one federal leases expired without the government actually vacating the properties, because there was nobody left to manage the exits. Landlords could not rent those spaces to other tenants. The government got hit with steep fees. A former GSA real estate official said the agency had been in "triage mode for months." And now? GSA is asking the fired workers if they want to come back — offering reinstatement and back pay for a period during which they did not work. The IRS is rehiring workers who took buyouts. The National Parks Service reinstated purged employees. One former official called the GSA episode the agency being "left broken and understaffed." The DOGE "Wall of Receipts" — which once claimed lease cancellations alone would save nearly $460 million — has since reduced that estimate to $140 million.

Who Actually Got Cut.

The three agencies that absorbed more than half of all staff reductions: the Defense Department lost over 60,000 employees; the Treasury Department lost over 30,000; the Agriculture Department lost over 20,000. The federal government as a whole shed 212,000 employees in 2025 — roughly 9% of the entire civilian federal workforce of 2.3 million. The people who left disproportionately had the most experience. The government saw a 17.4% net decrease in workers with 20 to 30 years of service, and a 33.2% net decrease among workers with more than 30 years of experience. The institutional knowledge that walked out the door cannot be bought back. Among the most-cut job titles: nurses. The federal government cut nurses. A Texas A&M law professor who specializes in administrative law put it plainly: the federal government's "ability to do sophisticated things is badly diminished because you can't convince good people to come. And even if you do, if they can be fired every four or eight years, you don't build up the institutional knowledge to do the things we expect a 21st century government to do."

Black Women Bore 33% of All the Cuts.

This is not incidental. Black women make up about 6% of the US labor force overall. Their representation in the federal workforce was about 12% — roughly double their share of the general workforce, because federal employment had historically been one of the more accessible paths to middle-class stability for Black Americans. When DOGE cut jobs, Black women absorbed 33% of those cuts. Between February and July 2025, Black women lost 319,000 jobs in the US labor market. Over the same period, white women gained 142,000 jobs. Latina women gained 176,000. White men gained 365,000. The Trump administration called the federal workforce "riddled with DEI" and targeted agencies specifically because of their diversity. The math reflects that targeting exactly.

The United States Institute of Peace. For What.

One of DOGE's most emblematic targets was the United States Institute of Peace — a congressionally established nonprofit meant to promote conflict resolution worldwide. It had a $50 million annual budget and operated in more than two dozen conflict zones including Afghanistan and Pakistan. DOGE staffers entered the building, seized control, fired the board, fired the acting president, fired all 300 employees. Workers were fired, then a judge reversed it, then another judge reinstated the firings. Some were rehired briefly, then fired again. One former staffer has applied to 140 jobs since being fired and is still looking. Another said: "Nobody was prepared for the complete destruction. And for what?" Trump has since put his name on the USIP building. He put his name on the building of the organization he destroyed.