DOGE Savings Don’t Come Close To DOGE Costs (Or Trump Tax Cut Costs)

Join CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summariesjoin our daily newsletterand/or follow us on Google News!

Final Up to date on: eleventh April 2025, 02:30 am

Information previously day is that DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”) that’s led however someway additionally not led by Elon Musk goals to chop US authorities prices by $150 billion a 12 months.

One thing that isn’t indicated is how a lot these cuts will add prices to People. Tens of hundreds of individuals have been minimize from helpful jobs that assist save People cash. As only one instance of that, DOGE minimize hundreds of IRS jobs. Have you learnt what IRS brokers do? They assist to root out tax fraud and guarantee individuals pay their taxes. Specifically, they’re crucial for going after tax fraud dedicated by the tremendous wealthy, individuals and corporations who can staff attorneys without end to attempt to bully their fraud throughout the road. These cuts in IRS jobs alone could cost the country $500 billion a year simply from individuals anticipating to get away with tax evasion due to IRS cuts. Are you able to inform me actual shortly — what’s an even bigger quantity, $500 billion or $150 billion? That’s simply certainly one of quite a few methods the DOGE cuts are anticipated to price trustworthy, regular taxpayers.*

As well as, “Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12,” Propublica reports. “A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” within the phrases of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.”

Additionally observe that DOGE’s unique purpose was to chop $2 trillion from the federal price range. Then that was dropped to $1 trillion. Now it’s at $150 billion, not even 8% of the unique goal.

Oh, sure, maybe we must also think about Elon Musk’s file delivering on targets — even ones he’s very sure about — on time. It’s not good.

Then there’s the truth that DOGE has repeatedly made extraordinarily false claims, and has needed to retract earlier claims of price cuts. In fact, Elon Musk and nameless DOGE staffers didn’t brazenly admit to that, simply type of hiding their errors as an alternative:

The latest declare of DOGE financial savings from Elon Musk is that they’ve uncovered tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} of unemployment insurance coverage fraud. Maybe this data beneath is correct, however it’s very laborious to consider any of it with out strong proof, significantly given the various earlier errors and false claims from Elon Musk and DOGE.

Additionally, coincidentally (or not), a part of this declare about unemployment insurance coverage fraud signifies $69 million of fraud a 12 months was recognized in a single odd group. That is reportedly from unemployment insurance coverage claims for individuals not born but. As you might need observed, 69 is certainly one of Elon Musk’s favourite numbers to joke about (for apparent, ridiculous causes). Is it a coincidence right here that 10,000 unborn kids are claiming $69 million in unemployment insurance coverage? Or is that this simply one other joke and rip-off from Elon Musk and his 19-year-old DOGE staffer and former cyber crime ring supporter “Big Balls”?

Except for the entire points above — and I wish to reiterate that there are going to be much more public well being points and prices, avoidable disasters, air pollution prices, and different harms/prices to society that they don’t seem to be balancing out these “savings” with — observe that the overarching purported purpose right here is to scale back the federal deficit. Nicely, anticipated Trump tax cuts on the wealthy are reportedly going so as to add $390 billion a 12 months to the deficit (i.e., reduce federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 through 2034 whereas supposedly elevating GDP by 1.1% for a $710 billion discount of these losses). By the way in which, these numbers come from a conservative, right-leaning group. Even if you happen to ignored all of these further prices famous above, does $150 billion minus $390 billion equal zero, or is that this administration that’s so involved concerning the federal deficit planning to add to the federal deficit by giant quantities? (Don’t take too lengthy, this isn’t a tough math query.)

We’re shedding crucial safeguards, safety, and providers for the American public. We’re shedding crucial IRS brokers who would nearly positively discover way more tax fraud than DOGE is discovering. (And who would guess that nicely skilled professionals can be higher at this than 19- to 24-year-old techbros?) We’re shedding essential assist for rising cleantech industries of the longer term, probably resulting in the US being left additional behind. We’re degrading the US in all of those methods, and we’re not even going to scale back the federal deficit, however as an alternative add to it considerably? Sorry, however how silly are we nowadays?

*Oh yeah, we’re also expected to lose a lot of tax revenue from deporting and scaring immigrants.