Headed by successful businessman and entrepreneur Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is a subcommittee on delivering on government efficiency that has started its inaugural hearings, titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud,” to investigate the hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted annually on improper payments and fraud. So far, DOGE has claimed to cut over 1 billion dollars in wasteful spending per day. The committee has found so much wasteful spending that we, as taxpayers who have been paying for this for years, should be enraged. However, despite its name, DOGE is not a cabinet-level department of the United States government but a temporary contracted government organization.

One of the first things that DOGE did was cancel all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) government contracts. Previously, the government spent 34.2 million dollars on inclusivity in the Federal Patent and Trademark Office, 1.4 million dollars for diversity in Pennsylvania mines, etc. These are just a few of the DEI-related spending. Here is a list of some of the other wasteful spending DOGE has found in just one day (Senator Rand Paul’s 2024 Festivus DOGE Report):

• 10 billion dollars on maintaining empty office buildings
• 2 million dollars for a study to see how kids react to ads on Facebook
• 3 million dollars to promote women in climate activism in Brazil
• Just under 1 million dollars to fund films in Jordan
• 365,000 dollars to fund a soccer league in Afghanistan
• 280,000 dollars for diversity in bird watching in Iraq
• 500,000 dollars given to Ethiopia to expand its social media presence
• 2.1 million dollars for border security…… in Paraguay
• 12 million dollars for fertilizer research in Vietnam, Colombia, and Brazil
• 800,000 dollars for Mexican duck conservation
• 43 million dollars for a gas station in Afghanistan
• (last but certainly not least) 12 million dollars to Sesame Street (the show) in Iraq!!!

These are just a few of the trillions of dollars saved and hundreds of contracts canceled. DOGE continues to find absurd spending issues with the federal government. Under the Trump administration’s America First concept, most foreign aid has been canceled, including the nine billion dollars of taxpayer money sent to Africa every year.

Recently, DOGE also made a case to shut down USAID, which soon enough President Trump did. USAID was heavily criticized in the past for accountability and careless spending. In a senate hearing within the last couple of weeks, many of the wasteful spending contracts have been made public. Some of the contracts were listed above, but others include: four million dollars to promote LGBTQ acting in South Africa, five million dollars to promote green energy transportation in the country Georgia, one and a half million dollars to promote pride in Jamaica, one hundred thousand dollars for a group to deliver live musical events to promote US/ Irish shared values to promote equality, etc. USAID has also been cited for corruption. It’s not surprising when you are paying millions of dollars to shady foreign agencies.

With the national debt reaching staggering highs of 36 trillion dollars, DOGE will help the US pay off the debt to countries such as China.

However, many lawsuits are piling on top of the desk of DOGE. However, many of the lawsuits are getting shut down. As per AP News: “Courts have cleared many of the lawsuits filed against DOGE.” Many Democrats say that Musk has no right to be digging around the Treasury, and these lawsuits might be able to bar him from further investigations, even though DOGE is saving trillions of taxpayers’ dollars. Jesse Waters says: “For some reason, Democrat federal workers are angry about DOGE!”