It seems like forever ago when Americans were inundated by the daily news with the chaos in the Trump administration’s empowering Elon Must and his DOGE, Department of Governmental Efficiency, to slash and burn their way through federal agencies and federal workforce. Almost a year later, it’s becoming possible to get an approximate accounting of the real savings, if any, that resulted from all the sound and fury. Indisputably, despite the failure of the program to actually save taxpayers much money under its stated mission, the pain it caused is real and lingers, especially in situations like the almost complete defunding of the US Agency for International Development (AID).
The Times crunched some numbers, as they have been trying to do throughout this reign of terror. It still seems impossible to come up with a real, bottom line number for what amount DOGE and Musk really saved, partially because so many of their claims were completely false or exaggerated. Many times his young, inexperienced techies had no clue how to understand the contracts, whether they were let or not, and how many dollars they represented.