A Dicastery of Papal Efficiency? Make It So!

One hundred fifty billion dollars is a big chunk of cheese.

That’s how much the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims to have saved the U.S. federal government through a combination of cancelations and renegotiations of controversial contracts, grants, and leases; deletions of fraudulent and improper payments; sales of assets; and reductions of the federal workforce. According to its website, DOGE has saved an average of $930 per American taxpayer, as of this writing.

The brainchild of billionaire provocateur Elon Musk, DOGE was created by President Donald Trump shortly after he returned to the White House this January. Trump appointed Musk to lead the fledgling department — an unpaid, temporary gig for the world’s richest man — and commissioned it with slashing federal spending, thereby radically reducing the overall size of the U.S. government. Musk’s goal is to cut the federal deficit by $1 trillion (or 15 percent) without affecting any critical government services — something he said is “quite achievable.” His team of youthful coders has tapped into the computer systems of numerous federal agencies, poring over budgets and expenses. “The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government is astounding,” Musk has said. “It’s mind-blowing.”

Many prior presidential administrations have talked about reducing waste and promoting efficiency; few have been able to accomplish it. Perhaps for good reason. Trump and Musk’s efforts have met considerable backlash: lawsuits, organized protests, mockery in the media, and flat-out refusals to comply. Even average citizens who’ve purchased Teslas — made by Musk’s electric-car manufacturer, one of his many companies — have had their vehicles vandalized by domestic terrorists of the radical Left.

The actions of DOGE and the reactions of its detractors seem to fall along strict ideological lines. If DOGE’s dispatches on its official X page are to be believed, many of the budgetary cuts it has introduced have involved programs and initiatives that export “progressive” American sociocultural ideology abroad — what Pope Francis has called “ideological colonization” — or strengthen it at home. Other programs and initiatives slated for termination are just plain nuts. A lot of them are both. Consider the following less-than-comprehensive list of dubious, if not ludicrous, government expenditures the DOGE team has axed: