DOGE's mass federal workforce cuts may cost taxpayers $135 billion
this fiscal year alone
DOGE claims to have saved the government $150 million in waste, fraud,
and abuse, but some federal workforce and policy experts believe Elon
Musk's cost-cutting efforts have proven expensive to taxpayers. The
chaos of personnel changes have tanked productivity, one expert
claims, costing the government billions in wasted payroll. Fired IRS
employees are no longer able to carry out audits to bring in key
revenue, another argued.
...
DOGE initially promised to identify and eliminate $2 trillion in the
first months of President Donald Trump's second term, though Musk
drastically cut that figure down to $150 billion--just 7.5% of his
original estimated savings. Those spending cuts have impacted 260,000
federal workers, who have been fired, taken buyouts, or retired early
since Trump's return to the White House, Reuters calculated. Between
layoffs and resignations, the Internal Revenue Service may lose up to
one-third of its 100,000-strong workforce, about 22,000 of which may
take Trump's most recent resignation offer, The New York Times
reported earlier this month.
The mass exodus of federal workers may mean the government has fewer
salaries to pay, but it also could critically reduce the amount of
work it can conduct, including collecting revenue from tax audits
....
A Yale University Budget Lab report from March found additional
evidence that DOGE's intended saving may be costing the government.
While it's unclear how much of the IRS's workforce will be reduced,
the Budget Lab calculated that should 22,000 employees leave the
agency, it would lose $8.5 billion in net revenue in 2026, largely as
a result of fewer personnel available to conduct audits. Over 10
years, this loss would amount to nearly $198 billion in revenue,
according to the report
https://fortune.com/article/doge-mass-federal-workforce-cuts-taxpayers-billions/
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