This is the equivalent of a major-league baseball franchise firing all of their minor-league players. It’s a huge amount of money being deliberately wasted.

Kevin Carroll, a lawyer who represents fired federal workers, on the firing of young federal workers by DOGE

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was originally supposed to save taxpayers trillions of dollars, but it will likely end up costing taxpayers trillions of dollars. It is a complete boondoggle.

One of the extremely costly and self-inflicted wounds of DOGE is the staffing cuts to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS is understaffed and working without adequate technology and infrastructure. There were more people working at the IRS in 1992 than there are today. The IRS is still using technology created in the 1970s. Congress’ underfunding and understaffing of the IRS means that it is easier for billionaires and other wealthy individuals to get away without paying their fair share of taxes. The Treasury Department estimates that the DOGE damage to the IRS could mean a loss of more than $500 billion in revenue this year. But, of course, the damage is not likely to be repaired and undone next year. It is reasonable to expect similar or even greater amounts of lost revenue in the coming years. In other words, this damage will likely total in trillions of dollars over time.

DOGE has joined the rest of the Trump administration in disrupting scientific and technological research in the United States. These actions will likely cause a brain drain of scientists and engineers out of the country and weaken the US economy. In April, DOGE canceled approximately 700 scientific research projects. This is only some of the destruction DOGE and the rest of the Trump administration is causing to scientific research in the United States. DOGE is also destroying the science training pipeline, which will cause the country to have a weaker science sector for decades. Seventy-five percent of US scientists who responded to a poll in Nature are considering leaving the country. It is not possible to calculate the long-term costs of the damage DOGE has done to US science and technology, but it is likely to be significant, and it will make taxpayers poorer.

At the time of this writing, DOGE claims to have saved taxpayers $160 billion – though it cannot even account for most of these supposed savings. As CEPR and the Partnership for Public Service have pointed out, DOGE’s mismanagement has cost taxpayers money due to the loss of federal worker productivity, the fire-to-rehire cycles, the paid leave, and the many lawsuits. This mismanagement — excluding the lawsuits — costs $135 billion, estimates the Partnership for Public Service.

By any fair assessment, DOGE is a complete disaster. It will end up costing taxpayers a substantial amount of money. Taxpayers will end up paying more and will receive weaker government protections of their health, safety and economic well-being.