March 17, 2026
Much audit, very waste
DOGE Didn't Cut Government Waste. It Was Government Waste
Elon’s ‘DOGE’ Squad Promised to Clean Up DC – Commenters Say It Set Tax Money on Fire Instead
TLDR: Reports say Elon Musk’s DOGE project, created to slash U.S. government spending, didn’t save money and coincided with costs going up instead. Commenters are tearing it apart as a taxpayer-funded vanity stunt, sparking a fierce brawl between Musk skeptics and loyalists over who’s really to blame for government waste.
Elon Musk’s big government cost-cutting project, DOGE, was sold as a tech-style clean‑up of Washington’s budget. But after reports showed spending actually went up, the internet did what it does best: it turned the whole thing into a roast. In the comments, people are calling DOGE “Silicon Valley’s Fyre Festival, but with tax dollars” and “Theranos for spreadsheets.”
The loudest voices are furious that a “we’ll save trillions” pledge became what they see as an overhyped vanity project with zero receipts. One camp is dunking on Musk hard, saying this proves once and for all that his genius myth was a marketing bubble. Another, smaller but loud group fires back that the real problem is Congress and the existing bureaucracy, accusing critics of having “Musk Derangement Syndrome” and ignoring decades of regular government waste. That clash has turned the thread into a full-on culture war cage match.
Of course, there are jokes. Lots of them. People are posting mock DOGE slogans like “Much Audit, Very Savings, Such Negative” and fake budget screenshots where the only line item is “Elon’s Vibes – $2,000,000,000,000.” One commenter summed it up with, “We didn’t get smaller government, we got a more expensive fan club.” The mood: part outrage, part meme party, zero trust left in miracle tech fixers.
Key Points
- •DOGE was a U.S. federal initiative promoted by Elon Musk to reduce government spending by applying private‑sector tech “efficiency.”
- •Musk publicly promised DOGE would help achieve massive federal spending cuts, including a campaign pledge of $2 trillion in reductions.
- •A comprehensive forensic accounting by the New York Times found that, under DOGE, federal spending did not decrease and instead increased.
- •A detailed report by House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia similarly concluded that DOGE failed to meet its stated fiscal goals.
- •Based on these independent analyses, the article characterizes DOGE as a failed program that did not cut waste and instead represented government waste itself.