The actual math behind DOGE’s cuts
Today’s must-read: “If you thought Elon Musk was really trying to cut costs, you weren’t in on the joke,” Jessica Riedl writes.
 

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“As an effort to meaningfully reduce federal spending,” Jessica Riedl writes, “DOGE remains wholly unserious.”

(Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Roberto Schmidt / AFP/ Getty; Julia Nikhinson / Bloomberg / Getty.)

 

In November, when Donald Trump first announced his plan to place Elon Musk in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency, the idea was widely written off as a joke. Then Trump took office, and DOGE began its very real stampede through the government …

Musk initially promised that he would eliminate $2 trillion of the $7 trillion federal budget, before scaling back his ambitions to $1 trillion, and then $150 billion. Even that revised target is highly improbable.

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