Norms Impact
DOGE Wasted Tens of Billions While Chainsawing the Government in the Name of ‘Efficiency’: Senate Report | Common Dreams
An “efficiency” crusade paid hundreds of thousands of federal workers not to work, froze lawful programs, and reset governing capacity without delivering the claimed public savings.
Jul 31, 2025
Sources
Summary
A U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee staff report found the Department of Government Efficiency wasted more than $21 billion in six months. A private billionaire-led “efficiency” drive was operationalized through sweeping personnel and funding actions that reshaped core federal capacity while claiming fiscal discipline. The result is immediate taxpayer cost from paid non-work and severance, plus cascading losses from halted programs and weakened enforcement.
Reality Check
When executive power is used to hollow out the civil service and freeze public programs under a branding campaign of “efficiency,” we normalize governance by shock therapy—and our rights and services become bargaining chips in someone else’s narrative. The conduct described reads less like routine management and more like a deliberate dismantling that produced quantifiable public losses while the administration pursued sweeping cuts elsewhere, eroding the basic norm that government actions must be tethered to lawful purpose and truthful accounting. On this record alone, specific criminal exposure cannot be established, but the pattern implicates core federal constraints on misuse of appropriations and program administration—if the freezes and shutdown-related spoilage and foregone revenues stemmed from unlawful impoundment or unauthorized obstruction, the Impoundment Control Act framework and appropriations law violations become central. Even absent provable criminal intent, the institutional breach is stark: using mass layoffs, severance costs, and program paralysis while claiming savings weaponizes state capacity against the public and corrodes democratic accountability.
Media
Detail
<p>A staff report released by the office of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, quantified waste attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over six months at more than $21 billion.</p><p>The report’s largest component was the cost of mass workforce reductions. In January, Elon Musk announced a “Deferred Resignation Program” offering federal employees early exit with benefits and pay through September 30; about 200,000 accepted, which the report calculated as $14.8 billion paid for eight months without work. The report also calculated $6.1 billion in severance tied to roughly 100,000 involuntary terminations.</p><p>The report further identified losses from funding freezes and agency shutdown impacts, including $263 million in foregone interest payments and fees from paused energy utility project loans and $110 million in spoiled food and medicine linked to the shuttering of USAID.</p>