What has Elon Musk's Doge actually achieved?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

59% : Fox host Jesse Watters in February made an on-air plea to Doge to rehire a veteran who "put his life on the line" for the US, but who was summarily fired as part of the cuts to the Department of Defense.
59% : Doge "got off in the wrong direction because it attacked exactly the wrong thing," says Matt Calkins, chief executive of software company Appian, which powers much of government procurement and has worked with the initiative on some cost-cutting measures.
52% : Yale's Budget Lab estimated that a reduction of just 7,000 IRS staff would save $6.9bn in salary costs over the next decade, but result in $64bn less in tax collections, as the agency's ability to go after tax cheats is curtailed.
50% : Almost all of the missing contracts involve the US Agency for International Development where no contract is listed.
50% : One of the larger claims -- a $1.4bn saving on an IT contract for the Department of Defense -- was singled out by the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth.
48% : As Doge has struggled to make headway, it has strained to paint a positive picture: to beef up its claims, its website mixes recurring cuts to federal spending through workforce reductions along with temporary or one-off influxes of cash from the sale of federal properties and contract cancellations.
47% : At the same time, US Treasury data has so far shown no drop in government spending.
47% : But he adds that "if you want to reassure bond markets, if you want to put the budget on a sustainable path, you need to make spending reductions to Medicare, Medicaid and social security.
45% : Despite claiming that welfare payments are riddled with fraud, the initiative has not substantially gone after social security, Medicare or Medicaid programmes, which account for more than half of annual spending.
44% : What are their financial holdings and potential conflicts of interest?" Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the permanent subcommittee on investigations, last month alleged that Musk and his companies faced at least $2.37bn in potential fines from federal investigations and regulatory actions being carried out by the very agencies being gutted by Doge.
43% : Nor has Doge succeeded in slashing red tape, despite Musk promising in November to effect a "drastic reduction in federal regulations" as its first order of business.
42% : The seemingly random suspension of tens of thousands of "probationary" government employees, a category that includes experienced civil servants who have recently been promoted into senior positions, caused chaos in constituencies far away from Washington DC. Park rangers were laid off in places like Wyoming and Iowa, while cancer researchers and those providing mental healthcare for veterans were fired nationwide -- provoking local fury that forced even Republican lawmakers resolutely loyal to Trump to protest against the cuts.
42% : Eventually, Trump stepped in, reinforcing in a heated cabinet meeting in March that secretaries of state had final say over decisions affecting their departments, and publicly urging Musk to use a "scalpel rather than the hatchet" when downsizing government.
40% : "People still do believe that there is waste in government spending, but the approach Doge has taken felt reckless.
39% : Six months after Donald Trump officially announced the formation of Musk's cost-cutting vehicle, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), it has yet to find a fraction of that initial sum on a one-off basis, let alone make the sort of cuts that would reduce spending year after year.
39% : The non-profit Partnership for Public Service has estimated that Doge's firing and rehiring of workers will cost the US $135bn this year in lost productivity.
38% : He leaves Washington a poorer man, as his political exploits have wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off Tesla's share price and have led to cancellations of contracts with his satellite internet provider Starlink. Doge, which Trump claimed had the potential to be as seismic as the Manhattan Project, has fallen short of Musk's own lofty expectations.
36% : "Given Doge's indiscriminate approach, it may take years to fully assess negative effects from broad cuts to departments focused on public health, aviation, energy, cyber security, taxation and education," Cembalest added.
34% : Trump has repeatedly referred to Musk as the head of Doge, though Amy Gleason, a longtime civil servant, is technically the agency's acting administrator, according to court filings.

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