Senate Democrats say what the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) called spending cuts amount to a "$21.7 billion blunder."
In a 55-page report released by minority Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, they claim that instead of saving money with spending reductions and staff cuts, DOGE has wasted $21.7 billion "despite its ostensible goal of eliminating government waste."
The report, released Thursday, claimed, "The waste generated by DOGE in six months could have fully covered the President's misguided rescissions package twice over — with $2.9 billion to spare."
The administration's Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), according to the report, is responsible for costing Americans $14.8 billion by paying approximately 200,000 employees not to work for up to eight months.
Another $6.1 billion is being spent, the report states, to cover about 100,000 federal 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."
The report goes headlong after former DOGE leader Elon Musk. "With Elon Musk at its head for its first four months, it is unsurprising that DOGE modeled itself on a defunct corporate motto, seeking to move fast and break things."
A big problem, according to the report, is that DOGE was good at breaking but not so good at fixing. "By prioritizing disruption over governance and failing to identify solutions for any of the problems it purported to solve, DOGE has created its own forms of waste."
The DOGE website portrays overall savings to date of $199B, averaging $1,236.02 savings per U.S. taxpayer.
The report said the impacts of downsizing the federal government are not measured in dollars only. It claims people will die.
"Globally, the shuttering of USAID is projected to result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years old."
Jim Mishler ✉
Jim Mishler, a seasoned reporter, anchor and news director, has decades of experience covering crime, politics and environmental issues.
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