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Image above is a composite from the MuskWatch DOGE Tracker last updated April 1. The latest DOGE unverified claim is $150 billion.

See How Government Spending Is Up Even as Musk Touts Savings

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The Wall Street Journal reports See How Government Spending Is Up Even as Musk Touts Savings. That’s a free link to lots of charts.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of daily financial statements issued by the Treasury Department found government spending since the inauguration is $154 billion more than in the same period in 2024 during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

DOGE claims cuts of $150 billion so far, but the Journal analysis found those efforts have yet to affect the bottom line.

And while the government’s income—taxes and revenues including tariffs—is also up, it isn’t enough to keep pace with higher spending.

Fiscal Year 2024 Budget

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Medicare and Medicaid

This year Social Security payments are $32.7 billion higher since Trump took office.

The increased costs are driven mainly by nearly 1.3 million new beneficiaries in the past year and a mandated 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment. DOGE says it is rooting out fraudulent claims and cutting staff, but Trump has promised to leave benefits untouched.

Medicare and Medicaid spending are similarly outpacing levels from a year ago, growing by about $29 billion since the inauguration. Increased enrollments and rising healthcare costs are helping fuel this growth. Combined, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for roughly 43% of federal spending in the last fiscal year.

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In addition to not touching Medicare and Medicaid, Trump promises to not tax Social Security and he wants to offer no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and restore deductibility of State and Local Income Taxes (SALT).

All of those items will add to the budget deficit and are not yet included in the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) deficit models.

Interest on the National Debt

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Rounding out the mandatory spending increases is the rapidly growing cost of interest on the national debt, which DOGE chief Elon Musk says could eventually consume the entire federal budget if unchecked.

The U.S. has paid out $25.5 billion more in interest since Trump returned to the White House than in the same period in 2024. Rising interest rates and a growing national debt contribute to higher interest costs.

Thanks to Trump’s inane tariff policies, yields on long-term treasuries are rising.

Stalled Efforts

DOGE launched its cost-cutting with a shock-and-awe campaign terminating at least 25,000 probationary federal workers and slashing funds for foreign aid. Some laid-off government workers have gotten their jobs back, and the termination of probationary employees is currently being litigated.

Federal salary payments are $2.8 billion higher than a year ago in part because of a Biden-approved 2% pay raise in January. Additionally, thousands of other employees who took buyout offers remain salaried through September.

There is a chance that the buyout offers actually increased salary costs this year, said Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the left-of-center Budget Lab at Yale. Some employees who had planned to retire or leave the federal government may have instead accepted a buyout and remained on payroll.

USAID

Small DOGE Wins

DOGE notched a few victories in a handful of the more than 100 spending categories tracked in the daily Treasury statement.

Spending by the Transportation Security Administration nearly flatlined for several weeks in February and March. Since Trump took office, the agency spent $22 million less in part by delaying spending on new uniforms, as well as curtailing travel and training costs, said Joe Shuker, a regional vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees TSA Council 100. In March, the Department of Homeland Security canceled the union contract that protected TSA airport security workers’ benefits.

Holy Fraud

DOGE is Careless in Operation and Reckless in Reporting

On February 18, I commented DOGE is Careless in Operation and Reckless in Reporting

Let’s discuss viral nonsense on alleged Social Security fraud and a simple explanation.

Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mètre.

These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.

Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.

However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X, writing that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”

The figures suggested that over 10 millions people aged over 120 were collecting benefits.

“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk wrote.

“DOGE going into all these agencies with largely unfettered access with a wrecking ball and no understanding of the business logic and structure behind the code, database, and configured business logic, related payment systems, and integrated decision trees, poses real risks to the privacy and persona-level data of millions of people across all of those records,” Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency executive-turned-whistleblower, tells WIRED.

Impossible to Believe

I find it hard to believe given the discussion of COBOL dates that Townhall can be that ignorant of what’s going on.

I find it impossible to believe Musk and DOGE do not by now know this is a COBOL date issue.

New Acronym PABS

PABS is Purposely Amplified BullShit

Musk makes these idiotic posts, knowing they are false, then places like TownHall purposely amplify the BS and the BS goes viral.

Not only did it happen with Social Security on February, where one might claim it was careless, but when it happens again on April 10, the only conclusion is PABS.

What We Don’t Know

What I don’t know is how much PABS is in the alleged $150 billion in savings. But we do know that of the claimed $150 billion, only $11.7 billion is verified.

Looking ahead, I estimate the USAID saving to be $9 billion. I am willing to assume verified saving will grow and some of the savings will be annual, at least for a few years, but not permanently.

Place a number on that. How will it be spent?

Musk’ Ridiculous and Contradictory Claims

Recall that Musk proposed finding $2 trillion in waste. He later dropped that to $1 trillion.

It’s now at a claimed $150 billion, including PABS.

Musk claims he will use the money to pay down the deficit. Hells bells, the increase in military spending alone eats up more than $150 billion even if you are silly enough to believe that number.

More Musk Magic

Please consider this bit of PABS. James Fishback, CEO of Azoria makes the case for a DOGE Dividend Check.

Not only will Musk pay down debt and help balance the budget, he also proposed $5,000 dividend checks to taxpayers to distribute the savings.

Fishback is a proud sponsor of PABS.

But for those who believe in magic, DOGE will save $2 trillion, take $400 billion of that and give DOGE Dividend Checks.

Musk signed on to this nonsense of giving away $400 billion of $150 billion of which only $11.7 billion is verified.

That’s PABS at its finest.

Related Posts

December 18, 2024: Do You Have Any Faith that Sheriff DOGE Will Reduce the Fiscal Deficit?

Before you answer, we need to define the word “faith” and the word “reduce”?

December 27, 2024: Can DOGE Cut $2 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion? What About Revenue?

The answer to the first question is obvious. So let’s discuss what’s reasonable.

January 10, 2025: Elon Musk Admits DOGE Can’t Find $2 Trillion In Budget Cuts

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that wasn’t possible. He won’t find $1 trillion either.

February 17, 2025: DOGE Makes Huge Mistake Firing Nuclear Workers, Now Seeks to Rehire Them

When you fire people without understanding what they even do, you make big mistakes.

March 30: Politically Clueless DOGE Disrupts the National Parks

After the fiasco with nuclear workers, one might have thought DOGE would think about needs before more mass firings.

Musk’s Claim: Democrats gave Millions of Illegals Social Security Numbers

Finally, since I was directly asked, please consider Musk’s Claim: Democrats gave Millions of Illegals Social Security Numbers

I go over point-by-point why the claim is at a minimum, mostly PABS.

To the extent Musk puts a spotlight on issues, fine, but I a tired of his needless lies, exaggerations, and reckless processes.

I fully support the idea of DOGE. I encourage states to do the same. But I draw the line and reckless processes and PABS reporting.

Addendum Hoot of the Day

The issue more so than the claimed “null values” problem is that many Cobol applications used 6-digit dates: YYMMDD or MMDDYY. When 1999 rolled over to 2000 the 99 became 00.

Oops. Date difference calculations became nonsense.

Depending on how the code was “patched” instead of fixed, you could get very young or very old people collecting benefits.

It appears the Government patched different system, different ways, resulting in different types of date nonsense.

This is how you get 150 year-old people and 5-year old people collecting benefits.

There was a mad-dash in banking applications to change code and files to fix this and I had a lead technical role.

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