We've talked plenty about how Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) was always more about performative cruelty than actual efficiency. But a new Senate report reveals just how spectacularly DOGE failed at its supposed core mission while causing immeasurable human suffering in the process. The entire concept blew up more spectacularly than one of Musk's Starships.

The numbers are damning. The report from the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations shows that DOGE wasted at least $21.7 billion in just six months - between January 20 and July 18, 2025. But hey, at least they got to feel like they were "draining the swamp," right?

As Senator Richard Blumenthal put it in the report's release:

"This report is a searing indictment of DOGE's false claims. At the very same time that the Trump Administration is cutting health care, nutrition assistance, and emergency services in the name of 'efficiency' and 'savings,' they have enabled DOGE's reckless waste of at least $21.7 billion dollars."

To recap the "efficiency": Musk promised to save trillions, actually wasted over $21 billion. That's some galaxy-brain efficiency right there.

To be fair, much of that "waste" comes from Musk's Twitter-style "resign now and we'll pay you for many months" plan to rid the government of employees. As the report notes, that cost the government $14.8 billion in salaries of people who couldn't actually do any work and then another $6.1 billion from people DOGE fired. And I'm sure that DOGE-supporting MAGA types will try to claim that this is fine, because it's a one-time cost and will lower government expenses going forward.

But that is untrue. Part of the problem here is that - contrary to the popular belief in MAGA circles - most people in the government were actually doing important work that the government needs to do. Firing all of them doesn't change that. Every few weeks there are another set of stories about how the Trump admin has to scramble to try to rehire the people that DOGE fired.

Doing things that way almost certainly increases costs, because of the level of painful inconsistency and the need to convince workers to come back to this shitshow after being treated so horribly. And, when they won't come back, then the government has to go out and find new people to fill those roles, which is also a very expensive proposition - and one the report didn't even explore.

Not only was much of this wasteful, it was wasteful for the stupidest of reasons: much of this destruction was based on conspiracy theories that Musk found on social media.

DOGE's crown jewel achievement was completely destroying USAID based on - and I feel the need to repeat this - conspiracy theories. A study published in The Lancet found that USAID had prevented 92 million deaths between 2001 and 2021. The agency's destruction is now projected to cause 14 million avoidable deaths over the next five years, including 4.5 million children under age 5.

This is blood on the hands of Musk and the ridiculous nonsense peddlers he believed, rather than talking to actual experts.

This is what happens when you put conspiracy theorists in charge of complex systems. DOGE didn't just fail at its stated mission - it actively made government less efficient while causing humanitarian catastrophes on a massive scale. And that's just with USAID. We're not even looking at most of the other cuts. And the report only briefly mentions the likely impact on the economy of some of these slash and burn efforts.

DOGE should go down in history as one of the most grotesquely incompetent government initiatives ever attempted. An agency supposedly created to eliminate waste that managed to waste billions in six months, create tremendous inefficiencies in the workforce, while destroying programs that actually worked and saved lives.

The only thing it efficiently accomplished was proving that putting conspiracy theorists and tech bros in charge of life-and-death decisions with no oversight, guardrails, or expertise is a recipe for disaster on an unprecedented scale.

But hey, at least Musk got to feel important for a few months while millions of people faced death and suffering. Efficiency!