President Donald Trump and multibillionaire Elon Musk have justified the chaotic and cruel federal cuts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency by claiming that they’re saving taxpayers money.
“We’ve taken back the money and reduced our debt to fight inflation and other things,” Trump said during his rambling address to a joint session of Congress earlier this month.
And in February, he even claimed that he would send checks to taxpayers worth 20% of DOGE’s savings.
However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s February Monthly Budget Review found that spending is actually higher than it was last year, with the federal government spending $605 billion in February 2025 compared to about $567 billion in February 2024.
“The federal government incurred a deficit of $308 billion in February 2025, CBO estimates—$11 billion more than the deficit recorded last February,” the report said.
Supposedly in the name of cost savings, Trump and Musk have fired thousands of federal employees—many of them veterans—with tens of thousands of more cuts planned in the coming months.
Trump and Musk have also virtually shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development and canceled billions in government grants for everything from food assistance and medical research funding to climate change projects and more.
Yet those cuts have not made even a dent in federal spending, and instead have endangered national security and public health and threatened to send the country into a devastating recession.
“No sign DOGE significantly cut spending or the deficit in February according to CBO. Federal outlays grew 7% compared to last year and the deficit grew 5%,” Brendan Duke, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote on X.
The fact that DOGE’s cuts haven’t actually saved taxpayers any money is likely why Musk said he’s now coming for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which make up the majority of the roughly $7 trillion annual federal budget.
The CBO report found that the government spent $7 billion more on Social Security payments and $6 billion more on Medicare payments than it did in February 2024.
The government also spent $7 billion more on interest, $15 billion more on refundable tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, and $4 billion more on the Department of Homeland Security—which is carrying out Trump’s mass deportation plans.
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that’s the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six, $700 billion,” Musk said in an interview with Fox Business host and Trump toady Larry Kudlow.
Already there’s been backlash to Trump and Musk’s DOGE cuts, with angry voters showing up at GOP lawmakers’ town hall meetings across the country. Republican leadership even told their members to stop holding town halls altogether to avoid any negative interactions that could be used against them in ads leading up to the 2026 midterms.
According to The Associated Press, backlash to cuts is exactly why the Trump administration is using DOGE, which is not an official government organization, to make the cuts rather than rely on Congress, where lawmakers are often afraid to cut programs that could lose them reelection.
“Some members of the Trump administration got frustrated that Congress won’t cut spending and decided to go around them,” Jessica Reidl, an economic policy expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said.
Both Social Security and Medicare have overwhelming support from voters, and they are critical to the lives of senior and disabled Americans. So if Musk follows through on these cuts, backlash is likely to grow exponentially.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
