DOGE Officially Ended on July 4 — It Promised $2 Trillion in Savings but Left an $11 Billion Hole from Paying Workers Not to Work, Federal Spending Hit a Post-COVID High, the Deficit Grew to $1.17 Trillion, Agencies Are Now Scrambling to Rehire, and Musk Says He Would "Not Do It Again"

The Department of Government Efficiency expired on Saturday, July 4, 2026 — eighteen months after Elon Musk walked into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with a chainsaw prop and a promise to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. The government is now spending more than when he arrived, the deficit is larger, and agencies across the federal government are posting job listings as fast as they can.

What DOGE promised vs. what happened

Musk set a target of $2 trillion in savings. As DOGE's website went dark on July 4, it claimed $215 billion — roughly one-tenth of the goal. Independent analysis found the real number is far smaller:

• Politico, analyzing $32.7 billion in contract savings DOGE could verify, estimated actual savings of $1.4 billion
• The Partnership for Public Service found that while DOGE claimed $160 billion in savings, it actually cost taxpayers $135 billion in additional costs
• DOGE staffer Nate Cavanaugh, deposed in a lawsuit in March 2026, testified under oath that DOGE "did not reduce the federal deficit"

Meanwhile, federal spending went up. Treasury data for the first six months of FY2026:

• Total spending: $3.6 trillion — up $83.9 billion (2.3%) from the prior year
• This is the highest level of spending since pandemic-era outlays — higher even than the COVID years when adjusted for timing
• The deficit for the half-year: $1.17 trillion — the second-largest since 2021
• Interest on the national debt: on track to exceed $1 trillion for the year. Nearly one in five tax dollars now goes to debt service

OMB Director Russell Vought said: "We have no plans to do kind of a closing DOGE report."

The $11 billion "Fork in the Road"

On January 28, 2025, DOGE sent federal employees the now-infamous "Fork in the Road" email: resign now, and the government will pay your full salary and benefits through September 30 while you do nothing. Nearly 140,000 workers accepted.

Public Citizen's analysis of OPM data found the program cost taxpayers between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026. Musk's America PAC had claimed the move "could lead to around $100 billion in savings."

Public Citizen researcher Douglas Pasternak called the program "stupid, costly, and deadly."

260,000 workers gone — now hiring again

More than 260,000 federal employees left government in 2025 under DOGE-led initiatives. Courts ordered reinstatements at 18 agencies covering more than 24,000 workers. Brookings Institution senior fellow Elaine Kamarck found that approximately 25,000 who were fired had to be rehired because they were deemed essential.

Kamarck: "What DOGE did is it cut so big and so deep and so randomly that when the Cabinet secretaries came in, and Elon Musk was gone, they realized that they had to bring some of these people back."

The numbers tell the story. In the last five months of 2025, USAJobs listed 68,900 federal positions. In the first five months of 2026: 104,000 — a 51% increase.

OPM Director Scott Kupor, asked if there is still a goal to cut the federal workforce: "I'm not hearing that." He described the current approach as a "reshaping" and said he expects the federal workforce to grow as agencies convert contractor positions to full-time employees.

Agency by agency: the damage

Veterans Affairs

The VA lost more than 40,000 employees in FY2025. 88% came from the Veterans Health Administration:

• 3,000 registered nurses
• 1,000 physicians
• 1,500 patient schedulers
• 700 social workers
• 1,100 custodians
• 2,000 claims processors

The result: the national mean wait time for new veteran mental health appointments exceeded 35 days — far above the 20-day threshold. At one VA outpatient clinic in California where seven of twelve mental health providers left, the wait for new patients: 134 days. Some veterans were limited to eight therapy sessions regardless of medical need.

A Senate Democrats report titled "Breaking the Pact" found 2025 was the first year in VA history the department experienced a net loss of employees. Senator Richard Blumenthal: "Dedicated professionals with decades of expertise are fleeing and recruitment is flagging because of toxic work conditions and draconian cuts and firings."

IRS

The IRS lost 31% of its tax auditors — 3,623 revenue agents — by March 2025. Approximately 7,300 probationary workers were terminated, 4,100 accepted the Fork in the Road, and 13,100 opted for buyouts. The division auditing billionaires lost 38% of staff.

The Yale Budget Lab estimated that abandoned audits could cost the Treasury $8.3 billion in 2026 alone. Over a decade, IRS workforce reductions and the clawback of Inflation Reduction Act enforcement funding are projected to cost $860 billion in lost revenue. The Center for American Progress put the ten-year figure near $1 trillion.

For context: every dollar spent auditing the top 0.1% of earners yields approximately $26 in revenue. An extra hour auditing a taxpayer earning over $5 million generates $4,900 in recommended additional tax.

The IRS has now been granted fast-track authority to hire 8,000 workers. IRS officials privately said virtually every element of operations was at risk.

Health and Human Services

HHS laid off 10,000 employees in April 2025 — including 3,500 at the FDA and 1,200 at the NIH. Another 10,000 took early retirement or voluntary separation. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acknowledged at the time: "We're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes." Among the acknowledged mistakes: eliminating the CDC's entire Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch.

By February 2026, Kennedy conceded to podcaster Theo Von that "targeted cuts would have been better" — a rare public admission from a Cabinet member.

By April 2026, HHS was hiring 12,000 new employees. Kennedy told a Senate panel there had been no degradation in service — while simultaneously explaining why he needed to hire more people than he had fired. The fired workers sued, alleging agencies "knew that the records were hopelessly error-ridden" and used faulty personnel data to terminate thousands.

Department of Defense

The Pentagon shed 78,000 employees. It then launched "War Force" — a hiring program seeking hundreds of software engineers and AI specialists at up to $200,000 per year. The program was a response to the net loss of 5,700 technology workers. The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office acknowledged: "We actually have some gaps inside our organization right now, because we've moved so rapidly with our deployment of AI. We burst at the seams really quickly."

The broader Tech Force program, launched in December 2025 to place 1,000 tech workers across government by March 2026, managed to hire only 125.

National Weather Service

DOGE arrived at NOAA in February 2025, demanded access to mission-critical databases, and announced plans to cut 50% of personnel and 30% of the budget. By month's end, roughly 880 employees — including leading scientists and forecasters — received termination notices.

An internal NWS document warned the agency was on the verge of "degraded" forecasting services due to "severe shortages" of meteorologists. Five past NWS directors signed a letter warning that cuts would create "needless loss of life."

Then it happened. Over the Fourth of July weekend 2025, catastrophic flooding struck six Central Texas counties. More than 100 people died; hundreds were missing. The Austin/San Antonio forecast office had lost its warning coordination meteorologist — the person who for decades coordinated between forecasters, emergency managers, and the public — to a DOGE-era early retirement offer.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Congress the cuts wouldn't be a problem because of "cutting-edge technology." The NWS was eventually approved to hire 450 replacements; about 190 were onboarded by fall 2025.

Social Security Administration

The SSA lost 1,727 customer service representatives between January 2025 and May 2026. To fill the gap, employees in the risk and quality department were asked to volunteer for 120-day stints answering phones.

One SSA employee: "They're robbing Peter to pay Paul." Another called the decision to push employees out "stupidity."

SSA is now hiring 1,000+ new employees, mostly for phone lines. It has already onboarded 500+ call center workers.

State Department

The State Department fired hundreds of career diplomats — Foreign Service officers with years of training and regional expertise. It is now recruiting and training replacements from scratch. Training a new Foreign Service officer takes years.

FAA

The FAA fired probationary employees, then hired many of them back. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy then launched a "supercharge" plan to hire 2,000 new air traffic controllers — after DOGE had fired 400 FAA support staff. The FAA met that goal for FY2025 (2,026 hired), but simultaneously, 2,700 other FAA employees signed up for the deferred resignation program.

Senator Patty Murray: "You can have all air traffic controllers there, but if they don't have the support staff, we can't know that they're doing the job."

Other agencies

• National Endowment for the Humanities: Lost two-thirds of staff. Molly Hardy, the NEH's 2024 Employee of the Year, was laid off. The agency is now emailing former employees asking them to reapply. Hardy, asked how it felt to get the rehiring email: "Affirming, but in a way that was so sick and twisted." She declined to return
• GSA: Lost nearly 40% of its workforce since October 2024. Now hiring 400 employees
• NASA: Cut approximately 25% of workforce. Launched "NASA Force" to rehire
• USAID: Gutted entirely. Key foreign aid programs shut down. Officials and aid groups attributed the closures to contributing to deaths worldwide
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Had to quickly rehire staff who were cut — the people who oversee nuclear power plants
• USDA nutrition office: Replaced only 0.3% of departed employees

Musk's verdict on his own project

In December 2025, Musk sat for an interview with conservative influencer Katie Miller. Asked about DOGE:

"We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful. We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful."

Asked if he would do it again:

"No, I don't think so. I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies. And they wouldn't have been burning the cars."

The man who proposed the project, ran the project, and branded the project with his cryptocurrency joke concluded it was "somewhat successful" — and not worth repeating.

What it cost

The ledger:

• $11–15 billion: Fork in the Road payouts (Public Citizen)
• $135 billion: Net additional costs from DOGE actions (Partnership for Public Service)
• $8.3 billion: Lost IRS revenue from abandoned audits in 2026 alone (Yale Budget Lab)
• $860 billion–$1 trillion: Projected lost IRS revenue over a decade (Yale / Center for American Progress)
• 260,000+: Federal employees who left government
• 104,000+: Job postings in the first five months of 2026 to replace them
• $0: Reduction in the federal deficit
• 0: After-action reports planned

The government fired a quarter of a million people, paid billions for them to leave, discovered it needed them, and is now paying to hire their replacements — who are less experienced, less trained, and less knowledgeable than the people who were pushed out. The deficit is larger. Spending is higher. Veterans are waiting months for mental health care. Weather forecasts are degraded. Audits of billionaires have dropped by half. Nuclear regulators were fired and rehired. Diplomats with decades of expertise were replaced by new recruits.

Musk got a chainsaw photo at CPAC, a peace prize from FIFA, and a realization that he should have been working on his companies instead. The government got an $11 billion bill for the privilege of destroying institutional knowledge it is now desperately trying to rebuild.

Jenny Mattingley, VP of the Partnership for Public Service, offered the most precise summary of what DOGE actually accomplished: "You can significantly politicize the federal workforce by firing them, and then loosening the standards."