February 15, 2025

DOGE claims $180 billion in savings as analysts find spending actually increased

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DOGE claims $180 billion saved while federal spending rises 5% and 270,000 workers lose jobs

🤝Civic Action🏛️Government💰Economy

DOGE claimed $180 billion in savings on its wall of receipts

PolitiFact, WSJ, NYT, and AEI found the savings claims were flawed

Musk promised $2 trillion cuts, then $1 trillion, then $150 billion

Education Department saw $17 billion decrease with nearly half staff cut

USAID lost 90% of contracts and spending fell by one-third

April 2025 federal spending was $594 billion, up 5% from April 2024

270,000+ federal workers lost jobs - largest peacetime reduction on record

🤝Civic Action🏛️Government💰Economy

Test Your Knowledge

Roughly how many federal jobs had DOGE cut by mid-February 2025, according to Reuters tracking?

Which cabinet-level department announced almost half its staff would be laid off under DOGE directives?

An AP-NORC poll found what share of Americans disapproved of the broad agency cuts two weeks after they began?

Reuters estimated Education’s spending alone would drop by roughly how much in FY 2025 after DOGE cuts?

PolitiFact rated Musk"s claim of \$2 trillion savings as…

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Head of DOGE claiming massive savings

Entity making spending cut claims

Fact-checker that found savings claims flawed

Compare claimed savings to actual budget numbers to evaluate government efficiency claims

Track which specific programs lost funding to understand who bears the cost of cuts

Note that workforce reductions do not automatically produce spending savings