Don’t Let the “War on Fraud” Become Another DOGE
At his State of the Union address on Feb. 25, President Donald J. Trump declared that Vice President JD Vance would be leading a new “war on fraud,” claiming Vance would find enough savings to balance the budget overnight. But based on how this administration’s earlier skirmishes against the triple threat of fraud, waste, and abuse fared, some skepticism is warranted.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made lofty promises to slash the annual federal budget by $2 trillion (later downgraded to $1 trillion) by July 4, 2026. But the temporary organization hasn’t updated its “Wall of Receipts” since October 2025, and Reuters reported in November that DOGE was no more—eight months and about $800 billion short of its stated goals, according to its own iffy estimates. Not only have those promises gone unfulfilled, the long-term costs could far outweigh the yet-to-be-seen savings.
Just over one year after the DOGE bros invaded federal agencies (sometimes forcefully), what do taxpayers have to show for the “move fast and break things” model of government reform?
The first organization to be named after a cryptocurrency (so far), this extraconstitutional experiment mishandled information at the Social Security Administration on multiple occasions, putting the personal data of nearly all Americans at risk. DOGE’s fickle approach to public safety consisted of firing (and then scrambling to rehire) workers who secure our nuclear weapons and nuclear waste. The department also undercut U.S. national and economic security by abruptly shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), thereby upending global commitments, leaving food aid to rot in situ, and disrupting nutrition programs.
At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers suffered potential misuse of personal data along with delays and deep uncertainty regarding promised funding from certain grants. In truth, some of these programs should be considered wasteful. For example, R Street and our allies in the Green Scissors coalition have long advocated for the elimination of the Rural Energy for America Program; however, common sense and decency require an orderly shutdown that doesn’t leave farmers on the hook for investments made based on a federal agency’s promises. USAID also needed significant reforms. Due to our dire fiscal straits, it’s critical that we reconsider and reprioritize all spending—discretionary and entitlements alike.
While some pointed to the dramatic and sudden federal workforce reduction as a major accomplishment, DOGE’s indiscriminate, often harsh tactics triggered a massive brain drain, resulting in the loss of essential expertise among federal employees and the creation of new bottlenecks.
“Contrary to DOGE’s modus operandi, additions to understaffed, essential agency functions are necessary to make government efficient,” explained R Street’s Devin Hartman in a 2025 op-ed. “For example, industry promoted hires at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide expertise to modernize regulations for advanced reactors. Without it, hopes for a nuclear renaissance diminish.”
It seems that the man who famously carried a sink into Twitter headquarters when he took over the platform threw the baby out with the bathwater in his latest endeavor.
Months before Musk swung a chainsaw at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (widely known as CPAC) yelling, “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy! Chainsaw!”, some tried to temper expectations. Center-right economic policy researcher and author Jessica Riedl, hardly a budget dove, warned that DOGE directors were “inflating expectations well beyond any plausible outcome.”
Ahead of its official launch, R Street urged DOGE to avoid reinventing the wheel; we largely know where the waste lies, and multiple reliable sources have mapped out the necessary reforms. We also pointed out that the real money is in tackling nondiscretionary spending and that it was essential for DOGE to work with Congress to accomplish their goals. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a strong proponent of DOGE, said “If we want to have real savings, they’re going to have to send this back to Congress, and Congress is going to have to approve of spending less money.”
The DOGE project was deeply flawed in ways far beyond mission failure, government dysfunction, or mere dollars and cents. When Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, he was publicly attacked by Musk and his followers—not on the substance of his remarks, but because he is blind. Hedtler-Gaudette and his organization are professional waste investigators. Had Musk’s team listened to Hedtler-Gaudette’s testimony, full of eminently reasonable and well-documented recommendations presented in an impartial manner, they might have been more successful.
Musk’s pervasive conflicts of interest are another moral failure. As Riedl notes in her exhaustive autopsy of DOGE failures, “Musk was given extraordinary authority despite no Senate confirmation, no legal oversight, no official clearance to access Americans’ confidential financial data, and several business conflicts of interest.”
As of spring 2025, Musk’s companies had received $38 billion in federal contracts even as he and his team were combing through such agreements—including those of his competitors. Musk’s Starlink was expanding across federal agencies, and Space X had active contracts across the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense, and more.
If DOGE’s Wall of Receipts were still keeping score, the tally would have to include broken promises, unrealized savings, unnecessary upheaval and uncertainty, increased government inefficiency, privacy violations, executive overreach, and potential corruption—a list of regrettable line items as long as a CVS receipt and in dire need of after-action public accountability. But the highest price might be paid by the very cause DOGE conspired to address: reducing wasteful spending and increasing government efficiency.
Unfortunately, the administration has once again set unrealistic expectations—it will take more than a war on fraud to balance the budget. Despite DOGE’s failure and the president’s overly optimistic announcement, rooting out waste and fraud remain meritorious and crucial goals. Left unaddressed, waste adds to our growing fiscal crisis and eats away at the foundations of government institutions. Cronyism and fraud proliferate where funds are misspent. This disrespects the taxpayers who provided those funds and corrodes public trust.
With any luck, the saga of DOGE will become a cautionary tale—something instructive that shows what missteps to avoid. Conversely, if good stewardship of public funds and program integrity become stigmatized through association, then the ultimate price tag could be extremely high. Lawmakers and their constituents cannot let the righteous cause of waste reduction fall victim to another hapless enterprise.