To date, the White House claims the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has saved taxpayers $115 billion, a little over $700 per the 161 million taxpayers. Liberal mainstream media and “Fact Checkers” are going to great lengths to try to undermine that number, cherry-picking various claims by Musk, but yet, most stop short at stating an actual number.

DOGE was created by President Trump through an executive order as a temporary organization within the White House until July 4, 2026.

I looked at CNN, Forbes, Snopes, PBS and VietFact for this article to try and make sense of the exact number of dollars saved but was unable to find an actual number. They pound their chests as if they just beat Musk in a wrestling match – for his efforts at stopping government waste!

VietFact did mention $2 billion might be the closest number, but who has heard of VietFact? Wouldn’t it be reasonable for a major news outlet or fact checking outfit to give a number that they can prove if they are going to call Musk or Trump a liar?

Still on the chopping block are the Biden grants to the EPA for bogus climate and clean-energy projects. Also, the savings to taxpayers will be enormous when the bloated Education Department is shuttered.  

Were you aware in 2024 the Biden Administration granted Power Forward Communities $2 billion to reduce the impact of household appliances in lower-income communities? They were buying new appliances for certain people – people who more than likely have no intention of reducing their own carbon footprint other than by enjoying their new appliances. The organization has ties to former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams who was instrumental in starting the organization. Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA claimed the entire scheme was set up in fraud and abuse.

Zeldin also reported a potential conflict of interest for a payment of $5 billion to the former director of the Greenhouse Reduction Fund. In totality, Zeldin has found $20 billion of wasteful EPA spending under Biden.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis recently announced the state of Florida is returning $878 million to the federal government, money that he tried to give back to Biden on numerous occasions. This came about after DeSantis met with Musk. DeSantis called on other states to do the same. (Fat chance Illinoisans.) Just last month DeSantis set up Florida’s version of DOGE to further eliminate waste within the state government.

So let’s say the White House numbers are inflated, a reasonable expectation. It would be an equally reasonable expectation that VietFact has low-balled the number. Whether the number is $2 billion as reported by VietFact or $115 billion as reported by Musk – either number is a lot of money, far beyond anybody that is writing or reading this commentary. Musk isn’t being paid for his services, nor is Trump. There are only forty employees working at DOGE, so there is no huge drain on the savings by highly paid people. The agency has been doing business since January 20^th of this year, just 60 days. There is nearly 16 months between now and July 4, 2026. On the low VietFact side, that would equate to $32 billion in savings or $1.84 trillion in White House figures.

What reason would Musk have to lie – they are torching and boycotting his businesses. He is currently the wealthiest man in the world by doing things naysayers said he couldn’t. If you don’t believe that just look back to last week when it was his organization, Space X, who retrieved the stranded astronauts, rather than NASA or the Biden Administration.

Would it be fair to say the actual number would lie somewhere in the middle to higher end of those two figures? It’s an old axiom the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Having no reason to believe otherwise, I personally would tend to lean nearer DOGE’s claims than liberal associations with an axe to grind against anything remotely connected to Trump. That group have all established beyond a reasonable doubt they are biased to anything Trumpian.  

The halfway point is $900 billion or nearly a trillion dollars. That would be a taxpayer savings of $5,590 per person. Don’t know about you, but I have better places for that money than in the coffers of some bloated bureaucracy. Perhaps that is money the Trump Administration might issue a reprieve from IRS taxes for a year or two. (Fat chance Illinoisans!)