Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal ripped into Elon Musk on Thursday, saying he came “not even close” to delivering on his budget-slashing fantasies for the federal government.
The former head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—instead presided over a $220 billion increase in federal spending this fiscal year, excluding interest, according to the Journal on Thursday.
“As the Trump administration started, Elon Musk claimed his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, could achieve $2 trillion in savings—equal to more than a quarter of total spending in fiscal 2024," the report noted, before adding dryly: “Not even close.”
The Journal said that $220 billion figure would have been even larger if the Trump administration hadn’t counted $131 billion in future savings—money that has yet to be realized—in September, as outlined in the Big Beautiful Bill.
So, it would have been a staggering $351 billion increase, excluding interest.
The Journal said that DOGE did manage to “claw back some grants and fire some probationary employees,” but it did little to alter “the big picture much so far.”
The tens of thousands fired under Musk’s leadership were seemingly a mistake, since hundreds of federal employees were offered their jobs back in September, according to the Associated Press.
The General Services Administration (GSA) sent out the requests after essentially a seven-month-long paid vacation because “the agency was left broken and understaffed,” Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official, told the AP.
“Other than student loans, the only major categories in which CBO said spending actually declined were the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, because it spent less resolving bank failures, and the Small Business Administration, because disaster-related loan costs in 2024 didn’t recur in 2025,” the report said.
In May, the world’s richest man ditched his helm of DOGE after a four-month tenure.
A months-long investigation into Trump’s “first buddy” and DOGE showed that Musk’s initiative cost taxpayers around $21.7 billion in waste, according to a July report, spearheaded by Senator Richard Blumenthal, from the minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).
