That’s $1 billion more than Musk’s DOGE.
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Taking my cues from noted genius Elon Musk, I managed to save the US government $151 billion this year. Here is how I did it: I thought of a really big number that sounds impressive, and then I tweeted about it.
I saved taxpayers $151 billion.
— Klaus Marre (@KlausMarre) April 12, 2025
That’s it.
Now, if you are saying: “Well, that’s stupid,” then you are 100 percent correct.
It really is.
Musk himself demonstrated just how stupid in a cabinet meeting this week, during which he proudly proclaimed that his Department of Grandiose Exaggeration (DOGE) would save taxpayers $150 billion in Fiscal Year 2026.
Why FY 2026? Nobody knows.
Presumably, those “savings” will come on top of the $150 billion figure that, according to its website, DOGE has already saved this year.
While that sounds like a lot, these “estimates” are down quite a bit from last year, when Musk bragged that he could slash the federal budget by $2 trillion, and from earlier this year, when he was talking about savings of $1 trillion.
But it really doesn’t matter what he says because it’s all nonsense.
A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that government spending is up $154 billion dollars this year compared to the same time in 2024.
And none of this takes into account that DOGE’s cuts to the IRS could lead to a tax revenue reduction of several hundred billion dollars this year.
In other words, even if Musk’s boasts are correct (and they likely are not because DOGE, in spite of its best efforts to obscure how it calculates its “savings,” has been caught fudging the numbers multiple times already), his anti-government crusade would end up resulting in a massive net loss.
It should be noted that all of those accusations of “fraud” that he likes to direct at anybody who does not agree with him have not resulted in any indictments yet.
That’s not to say that there isn’t waste, fraud, and abuse. Of course there is. After all, the US government shells out $6.8 trillion dollars this year, so there are ample opportunities for fraudsters like Donald Trump to line their pockets with taxpayer funds.
Bring in the DOGEsters: Will Vivek and Musk Clean Up Trump’s Grifting?
But slashing programs left and right and revoking funding for initiatives that the administration opposes on ideological grounds is not going to result in the massive savings that Musk claims to generate.
For example, Medicare fraud doesn’t usually involve elderly tricksters securing medical services they don’t need. Instead, it can be found on the provider side of things. Just ask Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who ran a hospital company charged with systematically overcharging Medicare that ended up settling with the government to the tune of $1.7 billion.
When looking at the fine print on the DOGE website, it also becomes clear that the “savings” that Musk routinely claims come from eliminating “fraud” are actually the result of everything from selling assets, canceling leases, the firing of government employees, and reduced interest payments.
If the savings are real at all.
And based on Musk’s track record that just doesn’t seem likely.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
