Musk’s latest DOGE savings goal seems to be short a few zeros

Washington: While stumping for Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk said he could cut $US2 trillion ($3.2 trillion) from the federal budget. After Trump took office and placed Musk in charge of the budget-slashing so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, Musk lowered that projection by half to $US1 trillion in the upcoming fiscal year.

In a cabinet meeting on Thursday (Friday AEST), Musk appeared to set his group’s goal lower still.

Elon Musk’s DOGE is some way off its $US1 trillion savings target.Credit: AP

“I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in ’26 from [the] reduction of waste and fraud by $US150 billion,” Musk told Trump, referring to the fiscal year, which runs from the beginning of October 2025 to the end of September 2026.

Musk’s group has slashed budgets and fired thousands of workers around Washington, but so far, the DOGE website indicates that it remains far from reaching its revised $US1 trillion goal in the next year.

As of Thursday, the site claimed $US150 billion in savings, with an itemised list of some of the purported cuts.

It was unclear if Musk meant to say that the $US150 billion was merely what his team had found so far – meaning that $US1 trillion in savings was still possible – or if that $US150 billion was all it expected to find.

A White House official said $US1 trillion in savings remained “the goal”.

Unlike a previous cabinet meeting, during which Trump had Musk speak at the outset, Thursday’s meeting began with the president asking Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to speak. Musk spoke later, and briefly.

In his remarks, Musk said he answered someone who asked how he found fraud in government by saying, “Actually, just go in any direction – that’s how you find it”.

He described it as a “target-rich environment”.

However, the website that Musk’s group has used to tout its savings has been plagued by errors, including triple-counting the same cancellations and claiming credit for cutting programs that ended under former US president George W. Bush.

Musk’s critics outside the administration – including Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former senior Trump White House official – have said publicly that the cost-cutting effort is directionally correct but that Musk is unlikely to achieve $US1 trillion in cuts.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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