Message #49001

[Jitendra Hydonus]

DOGE is dead, and the truth is finally out: it didn’t save money — it burned it. Analysts estimate DOGE’s chaos has COST taxpayers around $135 billion, from mass firings to lost tax revenue.

$135 BILLION.

That’s not a typo. That’s a real estimate from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, and it comes straight from the chaos Elon Musk and Donald Trump unleashed across the federal workforce. Those firings, forced resignations, and sloppy “restructuring” efforts? They’re expensive. Really expensive. And guess who pays? Not Musk. Not Trump. You.

DOGE promised to cut $2 trillion in waste. Then Musk lowered it to $150 billion. Now? Independent analyses say even that smaller number was wildly inflated — by as much as 80%. DOGE bragged about canceling “multi-billion-dollar” contracts that turned out to be worth… millions. In some cases, contracts had already expired, and DOGE tried to count them as “savings” anyway.

Meanwhile, the federal government is bleeding talent. More than 260,000 federal employees have been pushed out — fired, bought out, or forced into early retirement. Reuters documented that. Entire agencies are hollowed out. And the IRS might lose a full one-third of its workforce.

Why does that matter? Because when you fire the people who collect taxes, the government collects less money. A Yale Budget Lab report found that if 22,000 IRS workers leave, the agency will lose $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone — and nearly $198 billion over ten years. All because there aren’t enough people left to conduct audits or chase down wealthy tax cheats.

So DOGE isn’t saving money.
 It’s losing money.
 And not quietly.

The “efficiency” Musk promised has instead created a bureaucratic demolition derby. Productivity has cratered. Agencies can’t function. Workers spend hours each week responding to Musk’s emails demanding lists of their “five accomplishments,” costing an estimated 165,000 hours of lost time. That’s not efficiency — that’s ego.

And here’s the punchline: After just ten months, DOGE has now been quietly dissolved.

 Its own numbers never added up. Its projects collapsed. The workforce cuts caused more financial harm than good. Even experts who believe in cutting government waste say DOGE did the exact opposite — slashing randomly, creating confusion, and leaving taxpayers “holding the bag” while Musk strolls back to his private ventures.

This is the future Trump and Musk are selling: a government so gutted it can’t serve the public, collect taxes, or even function — but still somehow costs more.

They promised a revolution in efficiency.
 They gave us a massively expensive mess.

And the American people are the ones stuck paying the bill.