Every day, America generates an estimated $3 billion in interest debt. While President Donald Trump and his multi-billionaire ally Elon Musk are trying to save money – and even reach a balanced budget – with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), can it make a dent at the rate its going?
That $3 billion figure comes from Axios, and it is in line with estimates from the Government Accountability Office that the nation racked up more than 1.1 trillion in interest debt last year, up by $251 billion compared to the previous year. According to Axios, the U.S. has around $36 trillion in debt.
“Trump and Musk are correct that America is drowning in deficits,” said the outlet. “Some of it flows from silly spending on stale or even stupid programs.”
DOGE figures updated Monday indicate that the department has saved the country $65 billion, through a “combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”
However, multiple outlets have noted issues with the figures provided by DOGE on its website. This Wednesday, CBS News said that “for the second time in two weeks, DOGE’s ‘receipts’ don’t match its claims,” and ABC News said DOGE’s claims are “impossible to verify.”
CBS said that DOGE’s itemized savings dropped from $16.6 billion to $9.6 billion this week. It also said that 34% of the 2,299 receipts listed by DOGE report zero savings. Furthermore, even if the $65 billion figure is correct, the outlet noted that’s just approximately 0.9% of the entire 2024 federal budget of $6.75 trillion.
At the same time, Axios said that Trump has teased at having a balanced budget at some time in his term, something it said is “an impossibility without historic cuts to America’s most popular programs, such as Social Security.”
Experts have made suggestions for reducing debt in the U.S. Last year, the Penn Wharton Model from the University of Pennsylvania addressed three different policy “bundle” options that it said would reduce U.S. deficits by $3.4 trillion to $6 trillion in a 10-year period. These include a bundle that would raise taxes on corporations and high-income households; a bundle that would include broad-based changes to Social Security, Medicare and the employer deductibility of health care, and a bundle with a mixture of broad-based new tax revenues, including a carbon tax and a value-added tax, along with discretionary spending cuts.
During his first Cabinet meeting this week, the president backed Musk’s efforts and DOGE, CBS News reported.
“They have a lot of respect for Elon and that he’s doing this, and some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you for the most part I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled,” said Trump.
Musk addressed the somewhat rocky start to DOGE’s efforts at the meeting, which have also been met with confusion, protests and lawsuits. One of the latest moves by the new department to make headlines was an email sent to 2.3 million federal workers “demanding they list their accomplishments from the past week.”
Widespread cuts to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in particular were criticized. Musk revealed that those cuts resulted a halt to Ebola prevention efforts as an outbreak raged in Uganda, according to Business Insider.
“We will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect,” Musk told Trump’s cabinet. “When we make mistakes, we’ll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention.”
Just this week, Audacy reported on another round of cuts, this time in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Around 1,400 workers were laid off, bringing the total amount of layoffs to 2,400 layoffs in the past month.