The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was a great concept, but the political machine in Washington doomed it to failure.
If you recall, when DOGE was first announced, I laughed at the $2 trillion Elon Musk said he could cut from government spending.
Now, after getting a taste of how D.C. really operates, it would appear that Musk has been left with a rather bad taste in his mouth.
Remember Musk's appearance at a Trump campaign rally, wielding his fancy new chainsaw for all the cuts to government spending he was going to make?
Musk promised that he could slash at least $2 trillion, but that was never going to happen because of how tightly government spending is protected. You cannot cut money that has been approved by Congress unless lawmakers pass new legislation to eliminate that spending. I really don't think Musk was truly aware of how the process works in Congress.
The Tesla mogul quickly changed his tune on the likely volume of spending cuts, saying that $1 trillion was a more liklely benchmark.
When I reported on the promised cuts, I said I would be impressed if he could trim $500 billion in expenditures, but even that was wishful thinking, as it turns out.
After Musk left DOGE, with about $200 billion in cuts in his wake, which was 10% of what he initially promised, he had already realized that the government machine is about spending, not cutting.
Then he saw the BBB, and he expressed his disappointment, especially since none of the cuts he suggested were in the legislation, just trillions more in spending for a country that was about $37 trillion in debt at the time (we are now at $38.3 trillion in debt, and climbing).
When Musk was asked about the Donald Trump-backed bill, he responded, "I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."
That was the end of the bromance between Musk and Trump, at least for the time being. Trump was furious that Musk did not support the bill, and their summertime feud began.
Musk’s own business interests were horribly impacted by his work with DOGE, as his cars were torched at dealerships, his stock values declined, and his personal life was all over the tabloids, something he had more or less avoided to that point.
He was recently asked if he would sign on to work with DOGE again if he could rewind, and he responded, "I mean the thing is, like, I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically built, you know, worked on my companies essentially. So and not and the cars would they wouldn't have been burning the cars."
I never took DOGE seriously, even though I love the concept. I just know how the D.C. machine works, and there is no stopping it. Musk, in my opinion, was used in order to get him to write big checks for Republican campaigns, and it worked.
Now Musk realizes how the game works, and he wants no part of it again. Sadly, I think the GOP lost someone who could have been a major ally to offset the likes of Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and George Soros in terms of spending on behalf of the party. Musk might spend, but he will never again spend as he did in 2024.
