Data reveals Musk has delivered 0.25% of promised federal spending cuts

"Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion."

That was the cut to federal spending promised by Elon Musk at a Trump campaign rally in late October. As he defined the objectives of the Department of Government Efficiency for the first time that day, Musk was shooting from the hip. The centibillionaire was supposed to commit to a $1 trillion cut, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who helped plan the speech. But Musk doubled the number in a moment of fervor.

A few months later, with Donald Trump having secured the White House and DOGE well on its way to existence, Musk took a step back. "If we try for $2 trillion, we've got a good shot at getting [$1 trillion]," he said in early January. Musk remained committed to $1 trillion in cuts until last month, when he adopted a much more conservative tone, treating DOGE's $150 billion in claimed savings as mission accomplished.

With Musk now preparing to scale back his work for the White House, he joined a farewell Cabinet meeting last Wednesday, during which he took credit for saving the federal government $160 billion. However, the real number appears to be much lower, particularly when considering how much DOGE could save taxpayers in future federal budgets. For fiscal year 2026, Musk Watch's DOGE Tracker could verify just $5.02 billion in savings produced by DOGE.

Of the $165 billion in savings DOGE now claims — another $5 billion was added to DOGE's website following Musk's comments last week — it has only itemized $69.3 billion. But in many line items, DOGE claims savings but provides no information about the contract or grant. This makes these claimed savings impossible to verify.

In other cases, DOGE includes theoretical savings, counting unexercised government options to inflate the value of the contract. To correct for this, Musk Watch calculated savings by subtracting the amount already obligated from the total current value of the contract.

Tallying DOGE's savings that way, and excluding unidentified grants and contracts, we found that DOGE identified about $16 billion in verifiable cuts from grants and contracts. But that figure still doesn't tell the full story.

Musk promised to cut $2 trillion from the annual federal budget. But the $16 billion in verifiable cuts from grants and contracts will be realized over several years, since many of the contracts and grants that were cut spanned many years. DOGE made it difficult to calculate the annual savings because, in many cases, once it canceled the contract or grant, DOGE changed the termination date of the contract to the date of the cancellation.

To estimate the annual savings in 2026, Musk Watch analyzed about 5,000 grants and contracts terminated by DOGE where the cancellation date had not been changed. The lifespan of those commitments averaged 1233 days, or about 3 years and 3 months. So, to determine how much DOGE's cuts could save in Trump's first full fiscal year, Musk Watch calculated one year of prorated savings. We found that DOGE's verifiable cuts to contracts and grants would produce about $4.73 billion in fiscal year 2026. Adding in DOGE's full claimed cancellations of $291 million in real estate leases (even though many of those cuts are dubious) brings the total verified cuts to $5.02 billion.

$5.02 billion is about 0.25% of the $2 trillion Musk touted.

Since entering the White House in January, Musk has overseen an increase in federal spending. The Wharton School's federal budget tracker recorded a 6% rise, or about $156 billion, in federal spending under Trump compared to the same period last year.

DOGE, meanwhile, could end up costing the federal government $135 billion this year when accounting for the lawsuits its cuts have triggered and loss of tax revenue from a depleted IRS, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a good government nonprofit. The PPS model is a conservative estimate; it does not factor in new costs arising from the 260,000 federal workers who have been fired or have accepted buyout and early retirement offers as part of DOGE's workforce reductions.

Republicans have also used the promise of Musk's austerity treatment to justify extending Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which would largely benefit wealthy taxpayers at the cost of trillions to the federal government.

Although Musk failed to produce the savings he said he would, Trump has described the work of DOGE in glowing terms. "He found $160 billion worth of fraud, waste, and abuse," he said of Musk during a Meet the Press interview that aired on Sunday. "I think he’s done an amazing job." The president, when pressed about Musk's unmet $2 trillion pledge, replied, "Well, we're not finished yet."