DOGE Savings Don’t Come Close To DOGE Costs (Or Trump Tax Cut Costs)

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Last Updated on: 11th April 2025, 02:30 am

News in the past day is that DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”) that is led but somehow also not led by Elon Musk aims to cut US government costs by $150 billion a year.

Something that is not indicated is how much these cuts will add costs to Americans. Tens of thousands of people have been cut from useful jobs that help save Americans money. As just one example of that, DOGE cut thousands of IRS jobs. Do you know what IRS agents do? They help to root out tax fraud and ensure people pay their taxes. In particular, they are critical for going after tax fraud committed by the super rich, people and companies who can employees lawyers forever to try to bully their fraud across the line. These cuts in IRS jobs alone could cost the country $500 billion a year just from people expecting to get away with tax evasion thanks to IRS cuts. Can you tell me real quickly — what’s a bigger number, $500 billion or $150 billion? That’s just one of numerous ways the DOGE cuts are expected to cost honest, normal taxpayers.*

In addition, “Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12,” ProPublica reports. “A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.”

Also note that DOGE’s original aim was to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Then that was dropped to $1 trillion. Now it’s at $150 billion, not even 8% of the original target.

Oh, yes, perhaps we should also consider Elon Musk’s record delivering on targets — even ones he’s very certain about — on time. It’s not good.

Then there’s the fact that DOGE has repeatedly made extremely false claims, and has had to retract previous claims of cost cuts. Of course, Elon Musk and anonymous DOGE staffers didn’t openly admit to that, just sort of hiding their mistakes instead:

The most recent claim of DOGE savings from Elon Musk is that they’ve uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of unemployment insurance fraud. Perhaps this information below is accurate, but it’s very hard to believe any of it without solid proof, particularly given the many previous mistakes and false claims from Elon Musk and DOGE.

Also, coincidentally (or not), part of this claim about unemployment insurance fraud indicates $69 million of fraud a year was identified in one odd group. This is reportedly from unemployment insurance claims for people not born yet. As you might have noticed, 69 is one of Elon Musk’s favorite numbers to joke about (for obvious, ridiculous reasons). Is it a coincidence here that 10,000 unborn children are claiming $69 million in unemployment insurance? Or is this just another joke and scam from Elon Musk and his 19-year-old DOGE staffer and former cyber crime ring supporter “Big Balls”?

Aside from all of the issues above — and I want to reiterate that there are going to be a lot more public health issues and costs, avoidable disasters, pollution costs, and other harms/costs to society that they are not balancing out these “savings” with — note that the overarching purported aim here is to reduce the federal deficit. Well, expected Trump tax cuts on the rich are reportedly going to add $390 billion a year to the deficit (i.e., reduce federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 through 2034 while supposedly raising GDP by 1.1% for a $710 billion reduction of those losses). By the way, those numbers come from a conservative, right-leaning organization. Even if you ignored all of those extra costs noted above, does $150 billion minus $390 billion equal zero, or is this administration that is so concerned about the federal deficit planning to add to the federal deficit by large amounts? (Don’t take too long, this is not a hard math question.)

We’re losing critical safeguards, protection, and services for the American public. We’re losing critical IRS agents who would almost definitely find much more tax fraud than DOGE is finding. (And who would guess that well trained professionals would be better at this than 19- to 24-year-old techbros?) We’re losing important support for emerging cleantech industries of the future, most likely leading to the US being left further behind. We’re degrading the United States in all of these ways, and we’re not even going to reduce the federal deficit, but instead add to it significantly? Sorry, but how stupid are we these days?

*Oh yeah, we’re also expected to lose a lot of tax revenue from deporting and scaring immigrants.