Is Elon Musk's DOGE costing US taxpayers more than it's saving?

Elon Musk recently announced he will be "significantly" reducing the time he's spending leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) starting next month after it was confirmed Tesla's profit and sales nosedived at the start of 2025.

But what state is DOGE currently in and are the cuts in spending actually costing US taxpayers more than what the department is saving?

DOGE has a savings page on its website, updating weekly to show how much the department is saying it has saved.

The website was last updated on April 20 and claims to have so far saved a total of $160bn and each US taxpayer nearly $1,000, at the time of writing on April 26.

This is a "combination of asset sales, contract / lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings and workforce reductions".

However while DOGE said it is "working to upload all of our receipts in a digestible and transparent manner consistent with applicable rules and regulations", a breakdown of just 30 per cent of savings is currently detailed.

A CBS News investigation previously found some of this accounting has already been "overstated by billions of dollars" and a separate recent BBC News investigation has called into question figures from some of the receipts that have been uploaded so far.

And new analysis says the claimed $160bn savings figure from DOGE, which doesn't take into account the reported "overstatements" and receipt questions, will actually cost taxpayers $135bn this financial year.

Image by Win McNamee, Getty Images

CBS News reports the $135bn figure from the Partnership for Public Service (PSP), a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce, has come from adding up the costs associated with putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity.

The estimate is based on the $270bn annual compensation costs for the federal workforce and calculating the impact of DOGE's actions.

The $135bn does not include the expense of DOGE defending lawsuits brought against it either, nor the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS (Internal Revenue Service).

Add this all together, that DOGE may not have saved as much as it is claiming and that taxpayers could be paying more than the estimated $135bn, then there could be a crossover where DOGE's cuts at this moment in time are actually costing US taxpayers more.

Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, told CBS MoneyWatch: "We haven't seen much focus on the waste [DOGE] is creating. This is an effort that was created to address waste but we were seeing the opposite. Ultimately it's the public that will end up paying for this."

However the White House hit back at the analysis from PSP.

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, told CBS News: "The continued attempts to sow doubt in the massive accomplishments of this never-before-seen effort to make government more efficient speaks more about the illegitimacy of those peddling these falsehoods than good work of DOGE.

"The American public are in lockstep with the President's mission and will not be swayed by more lies coming from the legacy media."

Elsewhere, X / Twitter is reportedly shadow banning accounts that criticise Musk and Michelle Obama explains why she skipped Donald Trump's inauguration.

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