President Trump, Elon Musk, and their band of DOGE budget-cutters celebrate daily, even hourly targets to cut U.S. spending on everything from foreign aid to FAA personnel, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen writing in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• Trump himself has teased a balanced budget — an impossibility without historic cuts to America's most popular programs, such as Social Security.

Why it matters: Their proposed cuts are but drips of water in America's overflowing bucket of debt — $36 trillion and counting. In fact, most days, America racks up more interest on its debt — $3 billion per day! — than DOGE can find in savings. That leaky bucket is the reality of your nation's finances.

This column is our attempt to clinically outline the facts about deficits — and efforts to reduce or eliminate them.

🔭 The big picture: Trump and Musk are correct that America is drowning in deficits. Some of it flows from silly spending on stale or even stupid programs. Those make for terrific X dunking: Agencies with more software licenses than employees! A $324,671 USDA grant for "Increasing DEIA Programming for Integrated Pest Management"! A $3 million Education Department contract "to write a report that showed that prior reports were not utilized by schools"!

• But trimming fat is harder than it looks: 37% of the contract terminations on an initial list on DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" (417 out of 1,125) weren't expected to save any money, usually because it had already been spent.
• And the only way to truly reduce the deficit is to target the very programs Trump refuses to touch — defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They account for 86% of the budget.
• That's reality for a country that, across Democratic and Republican administrations, has spent taxpayer money without restraint or care about debt. This is one area where everyone is guilty.

Musk and DOGE suck up a lot of attention for doing what former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) did by needling "the boneheads of both parties," and the late Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) did with his Golden Fleece Award: highlighting the need for radical change, and the absurdity of many U.S. programs. Even Musk critics should applaud him for getting the public to pay attention to massive bugs in the federal system.

• But the Trump team is also using the guise of budget-cutting to eliminate jobs or areas they disagree with — or that undermine their ambitions.
• In doing so, they're also usurping the power of Congress — which, under the Constitution, sets U.S. spending priorities and budgets. That's producing court fights.

📊 State of play: The idea of DOGE is popular. A poll released yesterday by Harvard's Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll found 72% of U.S. registered voters polled online support the existence of a federal agency focused on efficiency.

• Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, told CNBC in Miami on Monday that while any "bureaucracy pushes back on everything," DOGE "needs to be done," and should be "not just about the deficit. It's about building the right policies, procedures and the government we deserve."
• So Trump and his aides correctly calculate that both the cuts and the tales of government insanity are popular with the vast majority of Americans.

💡 Reality check: Of the roughly $7 trillion the U.S. spent in 2024 (as calculated by Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin)...

• 60% went to mandatory programs — including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits, unemployment insurance and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
• 13% went to defense.
• 13% to interest payments.
• 14% for discretionary spending — leaving Trump not quite $1 trillion.

Column continues below.

When you consider where federal money really goes, most DOGE oddities and outrages amount to rounding errors in a sea of government obligations, Jim and Mike write.

🧮 By the numbers: Earlier this month, Trump promised on Truth Social: "BALANCED BUDGET!!!" Here's what would have to happen to deliver that, according to nonpartisan and academic experts:

• You'd need to eliminate roughly $2 trillion just to make up for the current deficit projection, plus interest on our existing debt.
• That'd mean massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicare and defense.
• There's also the question of how many times you can spend the same dollar. Trump says he wants tariffs to balance the budget — but he also wants them to eliminate income taxes. And "DOGE dividend" checks would send savings back to taxpayers instead of helping dig the country out of this hole.

The backstory: Trump is handcuffed by political reality and his own statements.

• He was elected on the promise of tax cuts. Those cuts likely would create even bigger deficits, at least in the short term.
• "Social Security won't be touched," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity two weeks ago. "Other than fraud or something we're going to find it's going to be strengthened but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched."

🐘 Case in point: House Republicans have vowed to cut Medicaid in the budget bill that would pay for Trump's tax cuts, border security buildup and other priorities.

• But Steve Bannon pointed out on his "War Room" podcast: "A lot of MAGA's on Medicaid ... Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can't take a meat ax to it, although I would love to."
• Michael Tuffin, CEO of AHIP, which represents health insurers, contends that disrupting Medicaid coverage could raise costs elsewhere and weaken chronic-disease prevention.

🎤 We told you over the weekend about the testy town halls that House Republicans are facing back home.

• One of them, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), told CNN's Manu Raju on Monday that the GOP could do a better job of showing "compassion."

Administration officials say Trump already has disrupted more in 37 days than most experts thought was possible. That is true. But most of the past month's wall-to-wall coverage has focused on bites that wouldn't add up to the meal that he's promised.

• Musk told Hannity: "If we don't solve the deficit, there won't be money for medical care." So Musk, who has spent his career defying bearish predictions, is now working his greatest puzzle of all.

The bottom line: Neil Irwin reminds us of the old line that the U.S. government consists of a military attached to an insurance company. In big-picture terms, that's pretty true.

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Despite his threats, Elon Musk can't simply fire federal employees for not responding to an email, attorneys and former senior federal officials tell Axios' Emily Peck.

• Why it matters: For the first time, some federal agencies appear to be pushing back on Musk's DOGE purge — and they're getting support from the executive branch, despite what President Trump says publicly.

🎨 The big picture: It's too early to tell if agencies will hold the line and terminate workers for failing to reply to the email, sent from the federal Office for Personnel Management (OPM) on Saturday — subject line "What did you do last week"?

• Many federal agencies, including the FBI, Defense Department and Homeland Security, have told workers not to respond to the OPM email. Some have explicitly told workers to reply.

Musk doubled down last night, saying: "Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."

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President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron showed bonhomie in the Oval Office yesterday — including vise-grip handshakes — despite voicing stark differences on Ukraine.

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President Trump sparked criticism and suspicion last week when he falsely blamed Ukraine for invading Russia. But his offhand remark reflected a belief his advisers say is real: that NATO helped "provoke" the conflict years ago, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

• Why it matters: Trump's view of Ukraine is key to understanding why he has turned 80 years of U.S. foreign policy on its ear by criticizing NATO, opposing its expansion there, and cutting European partners out of peace talks.

Critics on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean accuse Trump of kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, embracing the dictator's disinformation, excusing his aggression and putting Ukraine in too much of a vise.

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's approach to the war represents a rejection of the reflexively pro-European trans-Atlanticism of past presidents — especially Barack Obama, Joe Biden and George W. Bush. It's also rooted in Trump's longstanding desire to normalize ties with Russia.

• Another sign of how Trump is dramatically changing U.S. policy came yesterday, when the U.S. broke with European allies by declining to support a UN resolution that condemned Russia and demanded it withdraw from Ukraine.
• Ukraine also is at the heart of strained relations between the U.S. and Russia. It was at the center of Trump's first impeachment in 2019, and played a key role in the investigation of ties between Russia and Trump's campaign that began in 2016.

🔬 Between the lines: Trump advisers, put on the defensive over his comment about who started the Russia-Ukraine war, privately have fumed that the media is focusing too much on Trump's misstatement and too little on how the West antagonized Putin in the years before he invaded Ukraine.

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Facilities in Texas and Mississippi are holding the most detainees among the tens of thousands who've been rounded up across the nation during the ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, Axios' Russell Contreras writes from newly released federal data.

• Why it matters: U.S. government's immigration centers are at near capacity — and the Trump White House is pushing for dramatically more arrests.

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AI agents — chatbots with the ability not just to answer questions, but to act on users' behalf — are joining the workplace, whether workers want them or not, Axios' Megan Morrone writes.

• Slack chief marketing officer Ryan Gavin tells us: "People are underestimating just how much the world of work is about to change ... In just three or four or five years, I could be talking to agents as much, if not more than, I'm talking to my human colleagues today."

Keep reading.

The Eagles are in talks with the White House about visiting after their Super Bowl LIX win. But the team hasn't been formally invited by President Trump, a source with knowledge of the discussions tells Axios' Marc Caputo and Axios Philadelphia's Isaac Avilucea.

• Why it matters: The longstanding tradition of a championship team taking a trip to the White House was largely broken during Trump's first term, starting with the Eagles in 2018.

The Eagles are "definitely talking about coming" to the White House, said another source, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the talks. "There's been no rejection."

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