DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is a temporary task force authorized by President Trump with the stated mission to identify and eliminate wasteful spending.
The goal set by Musk and DOGE is to save taxpayers $1 trillion when its mission is over. That means DOGE is inspecting a government of 3 million employees, who are spending $6 trillion and adding $1.8 trillion in debt, during the current fiscal year.
At the White House Cabinet meeting Thursday, Musk updated President Trump on DOGE. He said it is projected to find $150 billion in “waste and fraud” by the end of the fiscal year.
When he is asked by people how DOGE is finding waste, fraud, and abuse, Musk said, he tells them DOGE can “go in any direction” because the government is a “target-rich” environment.
Around the Cabinet table, Musk and DOGE got a nod from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. She credited DOGE for finding two USDA grants for training “queer and transgender” farmers on “food justice.” Those two grants totaled $900,000.
“I’m not even sure what that means,” she said, “but apparently the last administration wanted to put our taxpayer dollars toward that.”
DOGE also found similar grant, she said, for $600,000 to study the “menstrual cycles of transgender men.”
In an X post on April 9, a day before the Cabinet meeting, DOGE said it found suspicious or outright fraudulent unemployment insurance claims from 2020 through 2025. Altogether, those claims added up to $382 million that went to, for example, 28,000 people who are ages 1 to 5.
On his AFR show Thursday, show host Abraham Hamilton III played a clip of Labor Secretary Lori Chevez-DeRemer speaking at the Cabinet meeting. She credited DOGE for discovering unemployment payments that went to 25,000 people who are supposedly 115 years older or older.
“I, like many of you, work hard for the money that I earn,” Hamilton told his audience. “It’s just providential that here we are, just five days away from April 15, Tax Day. Is this what we’re paying our tax dollars for?”
Gary Bauer, of American Values, says Americans have suffered under heavy taxation and mounting debt for 100 years until now. Thanks to DOGE, he said, the problems are finally being found and fixed.
“The bureaucrats, and the people that have oversight on them, have not done their job,” he complains. “And we, the American people, are going to be left holding the bag.”
