MW Musk claims otherwise, but the Trump administration's spending is on track to surpass Biden's

By Chris Matthews

U.S. Treasury is on pace to spend 7.4% more in 2025 than last year

Elon Musk doubled down on his pledge to cut government spending by $1 trillion - an amount that would slash the federal budget deficit in half and, if implemented, put the U.S. much closer to stabilizing the growth of its debt burden relative to the size of the economy.

"Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars," Musk told Fox News during Thursday evening's made-for-TV event - adding that he hoped to reduce overall federal spending by 15% solely through "eliminating waste and fraud," a goal he said "seems really quite achievable."

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He pointed to a number of examples of wasteful spending, including a survey that Musk claimed was done for the Interior Department at a cost of $830 million to collect Americans' opinions of national parks.

Musk said that the same survey could have been done by another vendor for just $10,000.

The "Department of Government Efficiency," headed by the Tesla $(TSLA)$ CEO (who also leads SpaceX and owns X, the former Twitter), says on its website that it has saved $130 billion so far, which amounts to about $2 billion in savings per day since President Donald Trump's inauguration.

That's about half of the $4 billion per day that Musk pledged to cut in his interview with Fox News's Bret Baier. It's difficult for reporters and analysts to confirm any of his claims, though erroneous claims and examples of claimed savings disappearing from the list of purported cost-saving cutbacks have been documented.

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DOGE made it particularly challenging to fact check its assertions when it removed federal identification numbers in its website's source code that could help outsiders identify specifically what grants and contracts the agency is referring to.

That makes it difficult if not impossible to know the vendors the government has contracted with and whether the government is actually saving the amount of money DOGE is asserting that it has.

The largest savings DOGE has laid claim to is a canceled $1.9 trillion contract for IT modernization. But the contractor awarded that money said last month that the award was actually canceled in November, when Joe Biden was president.

And there remain claims on the so-called department's website that are incorrect. The largest savings asserted by DOGE is a canceled $1.9 trillion contract for IT modernization. But the contractor awarded the money told the New York Times last month that the award was actually canceled in November, under President Joe Biden.

The Federal Procurement Data System, a database of federal procurement projects, indicates that no money was ever spent on this grant, despite its authorization of the IRS to spend $1.9 billion over 7 years.

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The Trump White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

A broader look at federal spending data also appears to counter claims that DOGE's efforts are saving money for American taxpayers.

The Hamilton Project, an economic-policy think tank, tracks federal spending using daily Treasury statements published by the government.

These data show that the federal government had spent $1.893 trillion in 2025 as of March 26, compared with $1.763 trillion as of the same date last year. In other words, federal spending is on pace to come in 7.4% higher this year than last.

It's not uncommon for federal outlays to grow year by year along with the economy. But the government is currently operating under a continuing budget resolution that largely locks in spending levels signed into law by Biden last year.

Read more: Here's the Republican plan to make 'DOGE' cuts permanent

By comparison, federal spending at the end of the first quarter in 2024 was on track to be 1.6% lower than in the prior year, though overall spending ended up 3% higher for the full year 2024 as compared with 2023.

'[M]ost of the cuts they have talked about are pretty small-bore, and I think that's the major takeaway.'Wendy Edelberg, Hamilton Project

"You would expect, given the rhetoric, to see big decreases relative to last year," Wendy Edelberg, former chief economist at the Congressional Budget Office and director of the Hamilton Project, told MarketWatch.

"It's less surprising when you consider that most of the cuts they have talked about are pretty small bore, and I think that's the major takeaway," she added.

Edelberg noted that even federal spending on salaries is coming in ahead of last year, suggesting that despite the Trump administration's putting many federal workers on administrative leave, those people are still getting paid.

These figures cannot by themselves refute claims made by Musk and DOGE, as it doesn't account for future savings that some contract and grant cancellations could realize for the Treasury.

It also doesn't account for seasonal variations in spending, as contract and grant dollars are not disbursed on a daily basis but in irregular lump sums.

It does provide evidence, however, that whatever savings DOGE has realized, they are not yet significant enough to see any deficit reduction in real time.

-Chris Matthews

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March 29, 2025 19:42 ET (23:42 GMT)

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