GROWING PAINS

Elon Musk’s Cost-Cutting Task Force DOGE Doubles Its Budget

The Department of Government Efficiency has increased its spending from $6.75 million to $14.4 million, according to an updated financial filing.

The Department of Government Efficiency—Elon Musk’s secretive government cost-cutting task force—has doubled its budget from $6.75 million to $14.4 million, according to an updated financial filing. President Donald Trump has tasked DOGE with cutting government costs by restructuring federal agencies and eliminating fraudulent spending. The group is operating without congressional oversight and has so far tried to purge the civil service, access the federal payments system, cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, and eliminate entire agencies. Musk said on Tuesday his team had identified more than $1 trillion worth of “fraud” and “abuse,” though he failed to provide evidence of a single example. An online “DOGE tracker” claimed it had already saved taxpayers $37.9 billion as of Thursday. It’s not clear what the group’s budget will be spent on. The DOGE financial filing just describes the budgetary resources as “anticipated reimbursements from agencies in support of Software Modernization Initiative.”