After all the hoopla and bragging about the massive amount of federal spending that would cease after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) took a chainsaw to it, the Wall Street Journal is reporting spending actually went up.
As the Journal’s Richard Rubin and Anthony DeBarros reported on Thursday, when billionaire Elon Musk pitched the idea of the new, but unofficial, government agency he boasted that there was $2 trillion in savings to be made and he had a plan to make it happen.
That was at the beginning of January and, according to the Journal, the spending numbers today tell a different story.
Regarding that $2 trillion target, they wrote: “Not even close.”
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The Journal is reporting, “DOGE did claw back some grants and fire some probationary employees. And some savings will show up later as federal workers who accepted deferred resignation drop off government payrolls in fiscal 2026. But that hasn’t changed the big picture much so far. Total spending excluding interest rose $220 billion, or 4%, for the entire fiscal year.”
The total would have been worse but Donald Trump’s administration took an early write-off of $131 billion in non-cash spending reduction still to come.
The report added, “Excluding that, non-interest spending would have risen by $351 billion for the entire year and total spending would have risen by $55 billion in September compared with a year earlier.”
You can read more here.