Summary
$150 billion: that’s the grand total of savings Elon Musk revealed last Thursday that he and his DOGE team are “expecting” to make after months of ruthless and often mindless cuts.
To call this a monumentally unimpressive number doesn’t do it justice. Musk’s “savings” here — which are already error-ridden and inflated in the first place, created by totaling up spending that never actually existed or that was, alternately, either already cut or never actually was — represent just 15% of the trillion dollars he originally promised he would slash.
In fact, government spending so far under Donald Trump has actually gone up compared to the last two years under Joe Biden.
“Musk will have effectively crippled the modern American state and ripped vital services away from ordinary Americans in order to pay for more waste at the Pentagon.”
Which is what Putin has tasked him with.
The goal was never to save money but find ways to enrich himself.
Ending democracy, that’s their true goal.
The working class has never had any form of democracy
That’s not true at all, even if you want to restrict yourself and only consider direct democracies as true democracies, you have at least Switzerland as an example.
In Sweden and Denmark, workers can even choose representatives to sit on the board of directors of the companies where they work (however, only for companies with more than 25 or 35 employees).
This entire post and thread is about the US
150 billion
Yeah and if you actually believe that to be true then I have a bridge to sell you. These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion
I’d be surprised if it’s even close to 15 billion
These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion
Even aside from stuff like this, things they claim to be saving tend to be cut contracts. Contracts that have already been paid, but will no longer have to provided what they’d been paid for.
Also they lost like 500Bn according to the IRS due to cutting IRS staff alone, not including revenue lost as a result of cutting services that the government provided and revenue lost as a result of other nations no longer doing business with the USA such as arms sales, energy, rocketry, hospitals, and other transactions.
By all accounts DOGE is losing money.
Same answer as the other reaction: if i start pulling on those threads then there is no end
It also completely ignored the cost of the consequences, which is likely going to easily outpace any money “saved”.
Oh inwasnt even gonna go there. Once you start pulling those threads it just becomes an absolute Avalanche of shit
It’s probable that it’s way less than that, and that’s not factoring in whatever it’ll cost to unfuck everything he’s done. Not that that’s likely to happen anytime soon.
Also not counting in the brain-drain that is already happening.
I hope it’ll be better for all you normal human beings in the US at some point in the future, I really do, but fuck me if this shit isn’t scary all the way on the side of the Atlantic, and that’s coming from someone living right next door to Russia. I’m way more scared of what’ll happen when the US goes full 4th Reich.
I guess one could argue you’re already there to be fair, but I still hope it went too far too fast and a backlash is incoming.
Doesn’t matter to the supporters. They believe he has streamlined government and saved gazillions. And if you don’t like DOGE there must be something wrong with you. Why wouldn’t you want a more efficient government without fraud and waste? Do you want waste?
The amount of money it’ll take to fix all this will dwarf the $150B. By several factors at least.
Good thing the US is trashing all their trade agreements, then. That’ll make paying for it so much easier.
Also losing 500Bn in tax revenue due to DOGE cutting back IRS staff.
NOT True! NOW that we saved a couple Million we can Afford BILLIONS in Contracts for Elon Musk and El Salvador and Greenland and my Kids is Starving because they Cut his Funding!
I’m possibly more worried about what he didn’t destroy at this point. What’s gone will at least be rebuilt largely from scratch by people that care about restoring those institutions.
My huge worry now is what backdoors are now in systems like social security that impacts us all and we may not find out about for a long time. How much identity theft and scamming will go on now that outside actors likely have access to some or all of that data?
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security
Every. Fucking. Thing that doge touched has been backdoored to Russia. Doge is a front to get sensitive information to the Kremlin. Elon is a fucking traitor.
Yes, exactly, and once I read this yesterday I allowed myself to rule out that I was just thinking the worst.
Daniel Bertulis appeared on The Lead, joined by his attorney Andrew Bakaj, and explained the details of how he apparently uncovered a massive amount of missing data from the NLRB following DOGE’s efforts. He ostensibly mocked a White House statement touting the transparency at play, noting that none of the code used by DOGE technicians has been shared publicly.
But the most shocking allegations came from Bakaj, who not only claimed that accounts based in Russia were using newly created DOGE usernames and passwords to access sensitive data, but also directly tied the effort to Elon Musk and his Starlink concerns, which has a relationship with the Kremlin.
“There are two data points that I wanna point out that should give everybody pause,” Bakaj said. “The first thing, what Dan witnessed was that within 15 minutes of DOGE employees creating user accounts, i.e. Usernames and passwords, within 15 minutes of those accounts being created, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with the right username and right passwords — that is to say — the right credentials. And that happened over 20 times.”
“The second data point, which is really critical, is that DOGE has also been using Starlink as a means to exfiltrate data,” he continued. “What that means is that, from our understanding, Russia has a direct pipeline of information through Starlink, which means that anything going through Starlink is going to Russia.”
I think I got this link from some Lemmy post yesterday, and I don’t like that I don’t know the source, but it seems to fit what is being talked about in regular mainstream reporting.
The whistleblower and his lawyer were on Rachel Maddow if you want a more reputable source. He also said that they taped a picture of him walking his dog to his door that was taken via drone as a sort of threat.
Appreciate that! Was good to hear it right from them.
Heard of the whistleblower related to DOGE who claims the tech group hired by Musk had already tried to breach government for years or so?
And how with each DOGE visit to a given department it always followed tactics of distraction and getting stored data, then suddenly leaving?
And how there’s suddenly many breach attempts by suspicious hackers linked to Russia right after DOGE visits?
Or how the biggest culprit of government bloating by hecking far, the Department of Defense, same department who has failed several audits, was never a target of DOGE?
Hm… Not suspicious at all. Sadly I can’t recall the source, but I think it was on YouTube.
NPR reported on that whistleblower: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security
In related news:
THAT was not the point
The destruction of the Nation, was.
$150 billion is the target for FY 2025, not what they’ve actually saved.
And as the article says, we already know that their “receipts” were mostly wrong or bullshit, so even that number will be inflated.
I mean I’ve been told this is the year to fudge on your taxes since the IRS is fucked so I mean maybe there’s some silver lining. Frankly Elon isn’t as bad as- hold on someone’s knocking on my door, I’ll be back in a bit.
Might not be the year to break laws though, considering even judges can’t save you
just FYI, its easier to audit a poor/middle class person because they dont pay 600 lawyers to play with where the money is for tax loopholes. Unless youre a multimillionaire you’ll probably end up regretting fudging anything unfortunately.
It doesn’t matter when the loads of idiots think he’s a genius. My dad is one of them. He refuses to believe anything that would call this into question calling it fake news. What am I even supposed to do?
Honestly, Elmo is as coherent as xQc.
cyberbully your dad
Slap the shit out of your dad 🤷🏼♂️
He saved all of our personal and national security information to give to the kremlin
The US budget is $7 trillion. Even if we pretend he saved $150 billion, that’s 2% of the budget.
Yes but he was able to direct the blank checks to himself and his buddies so the day is saved actually.
