Elon Musk calls DOGE "somewhat successful." Here's what it accomplished.

• "President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government,  and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment," a White House spokesperson said.

Driving the news: Musk assessed DOGE's legacy Tuesday on a podcast with Katie Miller, wife of Trump's top policy architect Stephen Miller.

• "We were a little bit successful. We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was just entirely wasteful."

By the numbers: DOGE estimates it saved $214 billion — a little over $1,300 per taxpayer — according to its savings tracker.

• However, the site was last updated Oct. 4, despite a pledge to refresh weekly.
• Regardless, America spent more money this year than in 2024, according to the Brookings Institution's expenditure tracker.
• And economists have consistently warned that DOGE's lack of transparency and incomplete receipts make it hard to fact-check specific achievements.

What they're saying: "An agency that claimed to be focused on governmental efficiency was itself chaotic, confused, frequently error-filled and un-transparent," Robert Weissman, co-president of watchdog group Public Citizen, tells Axios.

• "All of which seem to be contrary to notions of efficiency. So on the data, particularly, I would say we don't know."

Here's what we do know DOGE has accomplished:

Firing thousands of federal workers

DOGE fired scores of probationary federal workers with fewer employer protections, often without explanation.

• DOGE paid thousands more employees to exit the government early with the "fork in the road" buyouts.

Yes, but: Staff reductions come with a cost at agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, reducing the amount of money the government brings in.

• The administration's goal of removing 50,000 employees — 50% of current staff — risks losing roughly $400 billion in revenue over the next decade, according to the Yale Budget Lab.
• Lost revenue from layoffs at the IRS "will likely dwarf the fiscal savings of the entire DOGE effort," Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Axios.

Eliminating global aid

DOGE targeted the US Agency for International Development early on and effectively killed the agency.

• The agency's programs prevented an estimated 91 million deaths over the past two decades, including 30 million children, according to a July study.

• Unraveling USAID's could contribute to more than 14 million deaths by 2030, roughly a third of which would be children under 5, the study said.

Centralizing government data

The federal government collects huge amounts of data, separated across different agencies by design, so there's no single, centralized database.

• "What DOGE did was obliterate those distinctions and try to break the walls of protection and separation and compile information in a single place," Weissman said.
• Some of DOGE's actions likely violate data collection rules under the Privacy Act, according to government watchdogs.

Case in point: Social Security's chief data officer resigned in protest after DOGE employees siphoned agency data in a way that "circumvents oversight," ignoring warnings about security risks.

Slashing Consumer Protections

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau returned more than $21 billion to Americans' pockets since 2011. But it was long villainized by conservatives and business groups.

• Musk made it a top target for dismantling. The administration attempted to terminate over 1,500 employees in April, leaving around 200 people.
• Some employees remain due to an ongoing court case.

When will we know what DOGE did?

As a component of the White House — not a separate agency — DOGE is subject only to the Presidential Records Act and not broader government transparency laws.

The bottom line: That means we could wait for up to 12 years after Trump leaves office for a full accounting of DOGE's work.

Go deeper: Exclusive: Musk got DOGE's mission "backward," Lutnick says