ANALYSIS: Actions By Musk’s DOGE Wasted $22 Billion

August 1, 2025 Elon Musk, Trump Administration

Just in via press release:

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) released a Minority staff report today unveiling that Elon Musk’s brainchild, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has generated at least $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government between January 20, 2025, and July 18, 2025.

The report, “The $21.7 Billion Blunder: Analyzing the Waste Generated by DOGE,” follows a months-long investigation into Elon Musk and DOGE and is the most comprehensive effort to date to quantify taxpayer dollars squandered by DOGE despite its ostensible goal of eliminating government waste.

PSI’s comprehensive review of publicly available resources and independent analysis has found that DOGE has generated $21.7 billion in waste so far this year, including:

$14.8 billion through its Deferred Resignation Program for paying approximately 200,000 employees not to work for up to eight months.

$6.1 billion for over 100,000 employees who have been involuntarily separated from federal service or who remain on prolonged periods of administrative leave pending separation, many of whom were paid to not do their jobs for weeks or months.

$263 million in lost interest and fee income at the Department of Energy due to dozens of loan freezes meant to finance key utility projects supporting energy affordability and grid resilience.

$155 million in time costs to require nearly a million employees to send weekly accomplishment emails to the Office of Personnel Management amounting to millions of hours of wasted time.

$110 million on food aid and medical supplies spoiling in warehouses, set to be destroyed at a further cost to taxpayers.

$66 million by underutilizing thousands of professional staff to perform entry-level duties for weeks on end, including over $138,000 for paying scientists to check guests in at national parks.

$41.8 million to relocate over 250 staff members at one agency closer to a physical office.

$38 million in sunk costs on unrecoverable investments in science and technology across four projects at the National Institutes of Health and the Internal Revenue Service.

$1.7 million in time costs to require employees to unnecessarily justify routine expenses at three agencies, including window washing at the Federal Aviation Administration.

PSI’s estimate of DOGE-generated waste does not include other direct and indirect forms of waste that may add millions or even billions of dollars to projected waste, such as substantial administrative and legal expenses, undermining public safety and natural disaster response, human costs and health threats, and other hidden economic costs.

Ironically, the $21.7 billion in DOGE-generated waste could have fully covered President Trump’s misguided rescissions package twice over with $2.9 billion to spare despite the package being promoted as codifying DOGE’s purported savings over the next several years.

Read the full press release. And while all of the above was happening, Trump was blowing up the federal debt by multiple trillions. USA! USA! MAGA!



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