Elon Musk’s DOGE Crew – Not Good Enough for Government Work

Fantastical Savings Claims from Musk’s Clown Show

By Dean Baker

It's mostly bullshit

For folks who have not followed the Elon Musk-DOGE clown show, their main exhibit is the so-called “Wall of Receipts” that is supposed to show all the waste, fraud, and abuse they have eliminated.

It turns out that many of the claimed savings are hugely overstated or contracts that had already been canceled or completed. In some cases, contracts that appear on the Wall were later brought back because the agencies involved decided they were necessary.

It looks like when it comes to quality and efficiency, the DOGE crew are not good enough for government work. But apparently, they are good enough for Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and that’s all that matters in Washington these days.

But the idea of improving government efficiency is a good one, and that’s why we have the Government Accountability Office that regularly issues useful reports on sources of waste. It’s also why every department and agency has an independent inspector general, most of whom were fired by Musk and Trump.

While it does take time and serious research to weed out government waste, the Trump administration has given us many great examples which can be posted on a “People’s Wall of Receipts.”

Below is my starter’s list along with my very crude estimates of the potential savings. To be clear, I have literally no idea of the sums involved for some of these items, but I’m sure I will be closer to the mark than Elon and DOGE boys.

The People’s Wall of Receipts

• Trump’s Birthday Parade  — $45 million
• Refurbishing and Debugging Trump’s “Gift” Plane from Qatar — $1 billion
• Trump’s Golf Outings (Travel and Security) — $400 million (full-term)
• Kristi Noem’s Photo Ops in El Salvador and Elsewhere — $40 million
• Firing and Rehiring Workers  — $100 million
• Court Cases Defending Trump’s Blatantly Illegal Actions — $200 million
• DOGE — $100 million

Anyhow, this is my starting point for my People’s Wall of Receipts. I suppose I could make it sound more impressive by — following Trump administration practices — just adding three zeros to every number. But for now, I will try to stay at least in the right order of magnitude.

Can anyone find some other candidates for the People’s Wall of Receipts?

Dean Baker co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. He is the author of several books, including "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer."