DOGE disassembled ‘but the principles remain alive,’ Trump administration says

Geoff Bennett:

Now to some news about DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

The blunt-force operation Elon Musk and President Trump used to target federal agencies and spending earlier this year is now dismantled itself. Reuters reported this week that the government's top personnel official says the entity no longer exists. That's months ahead of its planned end date.

For more, we're joined now by our Lisa Desjardins.

Lisa, it's always great to see you.

So what do we actually know at this point? Does DOGE exist in any real form?

Lisa Desjardins:

It is at least disassembled, but like so much with DOGE, it is murky and it seems almost unnecessarily murky.

Let's talk about that Reuters report. It came out a couple of days ago. They quoted the head of personnel for the U.S. government, who said DOGE does not exist. But then we saw this from DOGE on the Internet social media yesterday, saying: "As usual, this is fake news from Reuters."

Just last week,it goes on to say, that DOGE was operating, terminating contracts. Now, I have been asking DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management for days for response, including on social media, asking, hoping they would respond to me that way. Have not heard anything, except the Office of Personnel Management did refer me to those — the comments from their director.

And this is it from Scott Kupor on X. He wrote: "The truth is that DOGE may not have centralized leadership, but the principles of DOGE remain alive."

What does that mysterious statement mean? To me, the interpretation there is that, in fact, DOGE is no longer its own entity with its own sort of independent abilities, but instead is dispersed. It has had officers throughout different agencies, and we will see each agency may go forward as they want.

But when Elon Musk launched DOGE, it had an end date of July next year. So it looks like what's actually happening here is all of this is wrapping up much sooner. And one big clue may be from President Trump himself, who now speaks about DOGE in the past tense.

Geoff Bennett:

You have tried to track what DOGE actually accomplished. What are the hard numbers?

Lisa Desjardins:

This is so important. This was such a part of what this country went through.

First of all, let's look at the savings as we know them. This comes from the Congressional Budget Office. The initial goal for DOGE to save money from Elon Musk was $2 trillion. Later, he said $1 trillion. Here's what DOGE claims it has saved so far on its so-called wall of receipts, looking at that today, $214 billion.

You run the numbers there. That's about 3 percent of the total federal budget. That's not nothing. That is a lot of money. But I have to remind viewers that we have reported, our producers and others, and so has the Associated Press, that those initial savings reported by DOGE really were not backed up for the facts.

We haven't been able to go through that number yet. In all, we also were told, I just got the numbers from DOGE, that they say 300,000 federal workers are no longer with the federal government. But, listen, most of that is from people who left through attrition or took early retirement.

So, in the end, DOGE mainly leaves with disruption and not so much from their efforts decreasing the size of government.

Geoff Bennett:

And, zooming out, has the Trump administration actually reduced overall government spending?

Lisa Desjardins:

No. Let's take a quick look.

Here's how much the government spent, according to the CBO in the last fiscal year. First of all, in 2024, $6.7 trillion in outlays. But then let's look at fiscal year 2025, which Trump has overseen much of, $7 trillion, so about the same.

The deficit, also from 2025 to 2024, has been about the same. The real problems are still unaddressed, Social Security, Medicare, and the debt itself, no one talking about it.

Geoff Bennett:

And, originally, DOGE lived in Congress through the Oversight Committee before it became an executive branch entity. Are Republicans still carrying this idea, this ethos with them?

Lisa Desjardins:

The House Subcommittee for DOGE has been an important part of DOGE.Who heads that subcommittee? Marjorie Taylor Greene. She has now announced she's leaving Congress at the beginning of January. I asked her office and also have asked House Oversight what's going to happen to that subcommittee. I haven't gotten a response yet.

It still exists. We don't know whether they will be flexing their muscles as much as they have in the future.

Geoff Bennett:

Lisa Desjardins, thanks so much.

Lisa Desjardins:

You're welcome.