Executive Summary

  • The Partnership for Public Service estimates that DOGE's federal workforce cuts have cost taxpayers approximately $135 billion this fiscal year in paid leave, severance, rehiring, and lost productivity
  • DOGE claims $160 billion in savings — but independent analysis has found the majority of those claims inaccurate or unverifiable
  • The Deferred Resignation Program alone cost $4.5 billion in salary and benefits for employees who stopped working
  • Lost IRS enforcement capacity is projected to reduce federal revenue by $8.5 billion in 2026 and nearly $198 billion over ten years, according to Congressional Budget Office methodology
  • DOGE is scheduled to terminate July 4, 2026 — with no inspector general and no independent audit of its fiscal impact

The Department of Government Efficiency has a website. On that website is a number, updated regularly, showing how much money DOGE says it has saved the American taxpayer. As of this writing, the figure exceeds $160 billion.

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has studied the federal workforce for two decades, has a different number. Their analysis, published in April 2026, estimates that DOGE's workforce actions — the mass layoffs, the deferred resignations, the probationary employee terminations, the rehiring of workers courts ordered reinstated — have cost taxpayers approximately $135 billion this fiscal year.

That is not a misprint. The efficiency operation may have generated costs nearly equal to its claimed savings. And the Partnership's estimate does not include what may be the largest fiscal damage of all: the collapse of IRS enforcement capacity.

Where the $135 Billion Went

The Partnership for Public Service based its estimate on the $270 billion in annual compensation costs for the federal civilian workforce, calculating the fiscal impact of DOGE's actions across several categories.

The Deferred Resignation Program — the administration's offer to federal employees that they could stop working immediately and collect salary and benefits through September 2025 — cost approximately $4.5 billion, according to the analysis. These were payments to employees who performed no work. The program was designed to reduce headcount, but the cost of paying tens of thousands of workers to leave was borne entirely by taxpayers.

Probationary employee terminations — the wave of firings targeting workers in their first year or two of federal service — triggered a cascade of legal challenges. Courts ordered many of these employees reinstated, but during the litigation, the government paid an estimated $443.9 million to keep terminated employees on administrative leave while their cases were adjudicated. The government was simultaneously paying their salaries and spending taxpayer funds to defend firing them.

Reduction-in-force severance payments — the mandatory severance owed to employees laid off through formal RIF procedures — totaled approximately $763.9 million between January 2025 and January 2026. Federal law requires severance pay for RIF-separated employees. The efficiency operation that aimed to cut spending triggered a legal obligation to spend.

Rehiring costs added another $12.1 million. When courts found terminations unlawful and ordered reinstatement, the government had to re-onboard employees it had already processed out — generating paperwork, systems access restoration, and administrative overhead in both directions.

The Partnership characterized the net result bluntly: DOGE's activities "more often created chaos without generating savings."

The IRS Revenue Hole

The $135 billion estimate covers direct workforce costs. It does not account for indirect fiscal damage — the most significant of which is the gutting of IRS enforcement capacity.

DOGE targeted the IRS aggressively. An estimated 22,000 IRS employees have departed or been terminated since January 2025, according to figures compiled by federal workforce trackers. Many of those employees were revenue agents — the staff who conduct audits, pursue tax fraud, and collect money owed to the government.

The Congressional Budget Office has consistently found that IRS enforcement spending generates far more revenue than it costs. Every additional dollar invested in IRS enforcement yields between $5 and $9 in recovered revenue, according to CBO analyses published in 2024. The math runs in reverse as well: every dollar cut from enforcement costs the Treasury multiple dollars in uncollected taxes.

Applying CBO methodology to the scale of IRS workforce reductions, the revenue impact is severe. The loss of 22,000 IRS employees is projected to reduce net federal revenue by $8.5 billion in 2026 alone — largely because fewer personnel are available to conduct audits that would otherwise identify and recover unpaid taxes, according to estimates derived from CBO projections. Over ten years, the cumulative revenue loss approaches $198 billion.

The efficiency operation saved the IRS's payroll costs. It sacrificed multiples of that amount in lost revenue. The net fiscal impact is deeply negative.

The Savings That Aren't

The $160 billion in savings that DOGE claims on its website has been subjected to independent scrutiny and found substantially overstated.

The New York Times examined the 40 largest savings claims on DOGE's public ledger and found only 12 that appeared accurate — meaning they represented actual, verifiable reductions in government spending commitments. The largest two entries — Defense Department contracts listed as terminated with combined claimed savings of $7.9 billion — were found to be still active and fully funded. Bastion Daily reported on those findings in detail last week.

A CBS News analysis corroborated the pattern, reporting that DOGE's own claimed savings of $160 billion are offset by at least $135 billion in costs that the efficiency operation generated. The net savings — if any exist at all — are a fraction of what the operation has advertised.

The original promise was $2 trillion in annual cuts. The delivered result is a contested claim of $160 billion in savings, offset by $135 billion in documented costs and potentially $198 billion in lost revenue. By every independent measure, the federal government is spending more in fiscal year 2026 than it did before DOGE began operations.

No Watchdog, No Audit

DOGE operates within the Executive Office of the President, which places it outside the jurisdiction of any inspector general with authority to proactively audit its operations. There is no independent watchdog examining whether DOGE's savings claims are accurate, whether its workforce actions complied with federal law, or whether the fiscal costs of its operations exceeded the savings it produced.

The DOGE Accountability and Transparency Act, introduced in the 119th Congress, would have required formal program evaluation of workforce reductions and public disclosure of cost-benefit analyses. The legislation was not enacted.

The Supreme Court has declined to compel DOGE to release operational records. FOIA requests have been largely unanswered. The Partnership for Public Service's analysis — along with investigative reporting by the New York Times, CBS News, and others — represents the most comprehensive independent accounting available. It was produced without the cooperation of DOGE or the White House.

DOGE is scheduled to terminate on July 4, 2026. When it does, the government will have no internal record of its fiscal impact that has been independently verified. The operation that promised to end waste may itself become the most expensive government initiative that no one audited.

What Accountability Looks Like

On April 15, OMB Director Russell Vought is scheduled to testify before the House Budget Committee — the first time the committee has secured his testimony after more than a year of refusal. Vought became the first OMB Director in history to decline a Budget Committee appearance, according to Ranking Member Brendan Boyle.

That hearing offers the first congressional opportunity to press the administration on the gap between DOGE's advertised savings and its documented costs. Whether the committee uses that opportunity will say as much about congressional oversight as it does about DOGE itself.

The numbers are not complicated. An operation that claims $160 billion in savings while generating $135 billion in costs and potentially $198 billion in lost revenue is not an efficiency operation. It is a fiscal event — and one that taxpayers are entitled to have audited before it disappears.

DOGE is scheduled to terminate July 4, 2026. OMB Director Russell Vought testifies before the House Budget Committee on April 15. The Partnership for Public Service's Federal Harms Tracker is available at ourpublicservice.org.