"WASHINGTON -- The White House's Department of Government Efficiency has drawn scrutiny for the rapid work of its technology team burrowing into several agencies, but it also says it has identified and cut more than $1 billion in spending in the first three weeks.
That is a fraction of the $2 trillion in spending cuts that Elon Musk, DOGE's public face, has set as a goal, but it shows how the entity has begun going program-by-program across several federal agencies and paring back what it considers low-hanging fruit. The initial actions it has taken, identifying relatively small-dollar programs, could soon change markedly as DOGE team members are now embedding in some of the government's largest programs, particularly those focused on healthcare.
Musk's team is also working with the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate, to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate.
More than half of the cost savings that DOGE says it has found is related to diversity, equity and inclusion, totaling more than $1 billion, according to a review of the group's posts on X, where it publishes its results.
DOGE said it also terminated about $30 million in contracts for digital modernization projects and at least $4 million in leases for little-used office space.
DOGE didn't provide comment or details of how it arrived at the spending cuts when asked by The Wall Street Journal.
When President Trump created DOGE by executive order, he tasked it with identifying ways to cut spending and regulation in a way that would make the government more efficient.
The federal government is projected to spend $7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that, Social Security payments account for roughly $1.6 trillion, Medicare -- a government-run health program for seniors -- is projected to cost $910 billion, and another $812 billion would go toward Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and healthcare marketplace subsidies.
Other massive parts of the budget include more than $850 billion for military spending, $950 billion in net interest payments on the debt and then a bucket that includes education, housing, transportation and other programs totaling close to $1 trillion.
Musk's group, so far, appears to be targeting a subset of programs in those buckets, but he has signaled that he thinks there are much bigger savings elsewhere in the budget that his group is now shifting its attention to. For example, his group recently gained access to Medicare and Medicaid's contracting and payments system, where they say they are looking for evidence of fraud.
DOGE was also involved in cutting National Institutes of Health grant money for overhead, according to a person familiar with the matter. Scientists quickly decried the cuts, saying they would devastate important medical research. The agency estimated the cuts, announced Friday night, would save $4 billion a year by capping at 15% the fees that universities and institutions get to pay for lab-support services, rather than individually negotiated rates that can exceed 60%.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, has estimated that there was $100 billion in improper payments made in 2023 in Medicare and Medicaid.
"If the priority had been to actually cut waste and fraud in federal spending, they're not looking in the right places," because the costs of the federal workforce are a fraction of the federal budget, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent government watchdog.
Brian said DOGE should focus on excessive payments to government contractors and military spending.
Because some of the spending that DOGE has targeted is money appropriated by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden, a number of lawmakers have alleged that attempting to claw back this money is illegal. Musk and Russell Vought, Trump's new budget director, have challenged this precedent and are expected to fight it in court." [1]
1. U.S. News: Larger Targets Now in DOGE Crosshairs --- Real estate eyed as cuts so far amount to small fraction of Musk's $2 trillion goal. Gillum, Jack. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 Feb 2025: A4.
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