Written by Nicholas Hughes
Every second, the United States moves closer to an insurmountable financial crisis. Each year, the federal government spends more money than it brings in, which forces it to take on debt to pay off its current costs. Debt is often examined as a percentage of gross domestic product because it signifies how large the debt is compared to our potential earnings. Using this debt-to-GDP ratio for the U.S., the government has already reached 100% with no end in sight (Congressional Budget Office, 2024). For perspective, this means the entire U.S. population would have to work for a year with no income or consumption to pay off the federal government’s debt. Even worse, debt payments are growing faster than GDP, meaning there will eventually be no way of staying afloat and keeping up payments in the future (GAO, 2025). With unmanageable debt, the country could suffer from lower growth rates and increased risk of financial crisis. Given this troubling information, it makes sense that reducing the debt has become an important political issue.
Enter Elon Musk and his newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, for short. The organization was created to reduce wasteful spending, fraud, and inefficiency throughout the federal government (Blackburn et al., 2024). DOGE set their sights very high to start, as Elon already promised he would reduce yearly spending by over $2 trillion before softening his claim, now hoping to get just $1 trillion in cuts (Ingram, 2025). While this sounds like a noble enough goal, it has deeply entrenched problems that make it difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish.
For starters, the federal government actually doesn’t have much waste to cut. Despite claims by DOGE of widespread fraud and abuse, federal spending can be broken down into just a few categories: Social Security, health insurance, defense, interest payments, welfare, and veterans benefits, amounting to about 91% of federal spending (U.S. Treasury, 2025). If DOGE wanted to make spending cuts as large as $1 trillion per year, they would have to cut into these programs. This seems unlikely because these programs are incredibly popular amongst citizens, and shrinking them would be a career-ending move for the politicians involved. A YouGov poll (Sanders, 2023) found that 76% of Americans had a favorable view of Social Security, and the majority of them even supported expanding Social Security and other similar programs. The success of these programs has justified their magnitude and place in the future of America.
But surely there is some inefficiency that DOGE could find, right? They might be able to cut into the remaining 10% of spending and come out with some reasonable success. To answer this question, allow us to turn to history. In 1982, Ronald Reagan created the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, more commonly known as the Grace Commission, to “drain the swamp” and reduce wasteful spending by the federal government (Klein, 2024). To lead this effort he appointed J. Peter Grace, a very successful chemical company CEO. The commission put together thousands of recommendations to cut costs and increase revenues, amounting to $424 billion in savings, equivalent to about 20% of federal spending. This should sound very familiar, almost parallel to Elon and DOGE. In the end, a separate analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office found that implementing 90% of the most important recommendations would only amount to $98 billion due to different accounting practices and recommending policy changes that would have to go through Congress (Klein, 2024). Thus, the Grace Commission largely fell short of its goals.
DOGE claimed they already saved the government $55 billion, but they have suffered from similar differences in accounting practices and outright calculation errors. For example, the DOGE website originally listed savings that only added up to approximately $16 billion before being revised to $7.2 billion. The revision was due to the fact they counted a contract worth $8 million as being worth $8 billion by mistake. Other issues with the data include savings claimed for money that has already been paid out, inflating savings by counting contracts multiple times, and counting multi-year savings for leases expiring in a few months (Bhatia et al., 2025). These differences in accounting indicate the true savings might be even less than the $7 billion listed. Not to mention, much of the savings has come from firing federal employees who may be providing value, meaning DOGE is making the government less efficient by reducing the number of productive people in the federal government. Even on the surface, saving a few billion sounds nice, but it is important to remember the scale of what we’re talking about. Federal debt is in the trillions, and saving $8 billion is only 0.1% of yearly federal spending. DOGE’s actions thus far have made effectively no difference.
So far, only economic challenges have been discussed, but DOGE has other problems standing in its way. DOGE is already facing legal challenges due to overstepping its limits. The department has roused through data and sensitive information of millions of Americans, prompting multiple lawsuits (Collier, 2025). There is also a possibility that already-brewing interpersonal problems fracture DOGE. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, was previously assigned to co-lead DOGE with Elon Musk, but their disagreements over the vision for the agency and Ramaswamy’s comments on H1B visas resulted in his departure before the operation began (Metzger, 2025). DOGE may be just one more disagreement away from meeting its demise.
With all this being said, is there hope for reigning in the deficit in the future? The answer is yes, and there has already been some success. One of the fastest-growing costs for the federal government is healthcare spending. Yet, this growth has largely stagnated over the past decade (Sanger-Katz et al., 2023). The usage of prospective reimbursements by Medicare has created an incentive for healthcare providers to minimize their costs and reduce spending bloat. Furthermore, large-scale provisions of prophylactic medications have reduced heart attacks and strokes among seniors, the most costly population to care for (Sanger-Katz et al., 2023). Finally, there are a variety of Social Security reforms ranging from simple changes to complete overhauls, such as small tax increases or private savings accounts. Such changes would increase revenues or reduce government costs of the program.
For the sake of the United States and its people, I am rooting for Elon and DOGE because our current trajectory is unsustainable. However, they most likely will not achieve a fraction of the success promised. The goals they set for themselves are fundamentally impossible once one understands how money is spent at the federal level, and changes to the most costly programs are out of their purview. Even if they found some success by looking for waste in the fraction of the government they could, they will likely fall short as the Grace Commission did, or worse, destroy federal programs that people rely on. As much hope as there is for DOGE, it is likely to fail. All we can do is hold them accountable for their false promises while continuing to find ways of stopping debt growth.
References
Bhatia, A., Badger, E., Fahrenthold, D. A., Katz, J., Sanger-Katz, M., & Singer, E. (2025, February 22). DOGE’s only public ledger is riddled with mistakes. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/upshot/doge-musk-trump-errors.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Blackburn, P. H., Luhby, T., Pellish, A., & Egan, M. (2024, November 13). Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ in Trump administration. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-trump/index.html
Collier, K. (2025, February 19). DOGE lawsuits: 11 cases about Musk group focus on data, privacy. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/doge-lawsuits-11-cases-musk-group-focus-data-privacy-rcna191695
Davidson, James (2013). Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur, at TED2013: The Young, The Wise, The Undiscovered. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedconference/8514592946
DOGE: Department of Government Efficiency. (2025, February 25). DOGE: Department of Government Efficiency. https://doge.gov/savings
Fiscal Data Explains Federal Spending. (2025, February 25). U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Ingram, D. (2025, January 9). Elon Musk says DOGE probably won’t find $2 trillion in federal budget cuts. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-says-doge-probably-wont-find-2-trillion-federal-budget-cuts-rcna186924
Klein, C. (2024, November 21). How Ronald Reagan Tried to Shrink Government Spending. HISTORY. https://www.history.com/news/ronald-reagan-grace-commission-government-efficiency
Metzger, B. (2025, January 20). Vivek Ramaswamy is leaving DOGE right as it’s getting started. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/vivek-ramaswamy-leaving-doge-2025-1
Sanders, L. (2023, February 8). How Americans evaluate Social Security, Medicare, and six other entitlement programs. YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45187-americans-evaluate-social-security-medicare-poll
Sanger-Katz, M., Parlapiano, A., & Katz, J. (2023, September 5). A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. And No One Is Sure Why. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/05/upshot/medicare-budget-threat-receded.html
The Long-Term Budget Outlook: 2024 to 2054. (2024, March). Congressional Budget Office. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59711U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025, February 5). The Nation’s Fiscal Health: Strategy Needed as Debt Levels Accelerate. U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107714