You Will Anyway: Is Elon really gone?

Saturday, May 31, 2025

Is Elon really gone?

I think you know the answer to that. But the mainstream media is pretending his announcement that he's leaving the White House means he's not involved in the Trump government any longer.

But, technically, his "special government employee status" was limited to 130 days per year, making May 30 a mandatory termination date. For THIS year. He'll still be working behind the scenes anyway. He might even be quiet about it. MIGHT.

From day one, DOGE was an operation built on a series of failures and misfires. Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s first partner in efficiency, left the department after two months. The fact that he was even there in the first place was nothing short of ironic: Did the Department of Government Efficiency really need two people to do the same job?

Things went downhill from there.

DOGE illegally fired over 200,000 federal employees, terminated thousands of federal contracts and gutted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to catastrophic levels. As you can imagine, it’s hard to be efficient when you’re severely lacking in employees and funding to get anything done.

Democracy Docket

Musk said that "We're talking about almost $200bn and rising fast," when asked about the total savings made by DOGE for 2025.

He also said that he would be reducing the amount he spends on political donations in the coming months: "I'm going to do a lot less in the future. I think I've done enough."

"If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason."

Newsweek

He says standing next to the man who has been pardoning criminals, setting them back on the streets, right and left. A man who has no empathy for anyone.

Elon Musk will not be fully exiting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—and its activities are only intensifying. On Friday, President Donald Trump threw cold water on the idea that Musk would fully disappear from DOGE and the White House forever. "Elon's really not leaving,” Trump said in a joint press conference with Musk in the Oval Office. “He's gonna be back and forth. It's his baby, he's going to be doing a lot of things."

“I expect to continue to provide advice," Musk, wearing a black hat with DOGE written on it and a black shirt reading “DOGEFATHER,” said during Friday's press conference, while noting that his legal limit for service as a special government employee was coming to an end. "I expect to remain a friend and an advisor.”

Wired

Translation: big donor.

The possibility of payouts from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE stimulus checks, remains uncertain as the process must receive multiple approvals before a potential dividend is sent out to Americans.President Donald Trump said he's considering a plan to pay out $5,000 stimulus checks to taxpayers in the form of a 'DOGE dividend' during a speech in February. He explained it as part of allocating 20% of the savings identified by DOGE to be returned to American taxpayers.

This 'DOGE dividend' idea was previously floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback on Musk's social media platform X, suggesting Trump and Musk "should announce a ‘DOGE Dividend’ — a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE." Musk replied, "Will check with the President."

[...]

The checks, however, may fall short of the proposed $5,000. Fishback noted that if DOGE doesn’t hit its expected $2 trillion savings goal, stimulus checks could be reduced.

“So again, if the savings are only $1 trillion, which I think is awfully low, the check goes from $5,000 to $2,500,” Fishback said during a podcast appearance. “If the savings are only $500 billion, which, again, is really, really low, then the [checks] are only $1,250.”

Austin Statesman

A word to the wise: do not hold your breath waiting for that check.

The potential refund would be sent only to households that are net-income taxpayers — people who pay more in taxes than they get back — with lower-income Americans not qualifying for the return, according to news reports. The Pew Research Center cites that most Americans with an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 effectively pay no federal income tax.

Between reports of lost tax income, the cost of putting workers on administrative leave, and DOGE’s own budget, the Elon Musk fronted unit may wind up costing U.S.

[...]

Today, DOGE has pushed tens of thousands of workers into that bucket, with the thinking being that when those workers are off the payroll for good, the amount they would have been paid is then saved.

[...]

“These firings they’re conducting without following the law will result in hundreds of thousands of former federal employees being owed back pay, plus interest, plus benefits, plus attorneys fees,” said labor attorney Suzanne Summerlin in an interview last month with The Guardian. “When the bill comes, it will be monumental.”)

The full cost of the number of workers currently on forced administrative leave is something no one has been able to calculate yet, in part because of the rapidly escalating number of people being impacted by reductions in force and the ensuing court fights.

Inc.

And that doesn't include the cost of reducing the efficiency of agencies whose numbers have been slashed.

Beyond the cost of administrative leave, DOGE firings at the Internal Revenue Service are expected to result in a significant revenue shortfall this year.

Disruptions from DOGE could mean $500 billion in lost federal revenue this year, according to a report in The Washington Post. A growing number of individuals and businesses may opt to not files taxes or not pay what they owe the IRS, knowing the agency enforcement division is being de-emphasized. (That amount, to put it in perspective, is about 60 percent of the Defense Department’s annual budget.)

Rather than set government straight, Elon Musk is leaving Washington with the federal budget all cattywampus. Deficit spending is increasing, not waning, and there is a growing school of thought that his “efficiency” effort could end up costing the government as much as or more than it saved.

[...]

Musk will leave government work “disappointed” that the Republicans he helped put in power are working to pass a bill that is estimated to add some $3.8 trillion in deficit spending and which Trump calls “big” and “beautiful.”

There’s no accounting trick to correct that imbalance. The budget is trillions out of whack, and the shock-and-awe campaign Musk and Trump imposed across the federal workforce has led to some serious PTSD for federal workers and contractors while claiming only to have saved $175 billion.

That’s not chump change, but it’s not going to radically reform the US government. What’s listed on the still-rudimentary DOGE website is also not an accurate reflection of what the group might actually have accomplished.

[...]

Picking apart the “estimated savings” of $175 billion on the DOGE website, [CNN’s Casey] Tolan told me that less than half that figure is backed up with even the most basic documentation. That means it’s possible only even to start investigating about $32 billion of savings from terminated contracts, $40 billion of savings from terminated grants and $216 million of savings from terminated leases that DOGE claims.

Plus, some of the specific terminations that are included in those numbers have no details at all. And Tolan has reported on the fact that DOGE’s tally has “been marred by various errors and dubious calculations throughout the entire time they’ve been releasing this info.”

DOGE claims to have saved $1086.98 per taxpayer. Is that right? Probably not. The figure is based on “161 million individual federal taxpayers,” according to the DOGE website, which drastically undercounts taxpayers in the US. That 161 million figure is more likely a reflection of individual tax returns and would not reflect married people who file jointly.

[...]

“This distinction is about trying to get that number as large as possible. If instead it was expressed as per American then it would be $514,” and only if you assume DOGE has saved $175 billion, which it probably has not.

[...]

[S]taffing cuts at the IRS will mean the US brings in less revenue — but so will operating national parks short-staffed. Plus, a universe of litigation related to DOGE’s efforts to cancel contracts and fire workers seemingly without cause is percolating through courts.

“In total, estimates suggest that what has been spent to generate these cuts may be as great as the cuts. In the long run, it’s not clear that DOGE generated any savings."

[...]

The federal workforce is literally in trauma — something Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, said was an aim of his.

[Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service] estimates the federal workers will be much less productive after DOGE’s efforts, for a variety of reasons. Workers are now worried about losing jobs; their morale is depleted; they are distracted from their work; and many top performers are being reassigned or are leaving entirely.

[...]

While Musk has promised maximum transparency, it has been impossible to verify much of what DOGE has said it has done.

[...]

“So far, we’ve just canceled contracts,” [Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute] said. “The money is still spent because Congress spends the money.”

[...]

“And the receipts that DOGE has shown that are posted publicly are nonetheless woefully inadequate to back their claims.”

[...]

[Jessica Tillipman, an expert in government procurement law at George Washington University said,] “What have we seen? You require everybody to come back to work and you don’t have office space,” she said as one example.

“You have people doing work that they’re not trained to do. You have talent drains,” Tillipman said, pointing out that most of the government firings so far were among recently hired workers often brought on with a particular expertise.

“Half the training programs for the government have been canceled, so these pipelines that the government spent decades working on to make sure that there’s a steady supply and the government’s an attractive place for high-quality talent have gone away.”

The long-term effect of those changes will not be clear for some time.

[...]

[G]overnment outlays are on track to rise by 9% in 2025 compared with 2024. That’s because Americans are living longer and drawing more from programs like Medicare and Social Security.

CBS

And they're coming after those things in order to give the richest people in the country more tax cuts.

None of this considers the cost of the physical damage DOGE has caused to federal offices.