This article originally appeared in The Detroit News June 4, 2025.

The swamp of Washington, D.C., has defeated many crusaders, and it appears Elon Musk will join the ranks of the vanquished. In his role with the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk made a riveting figure. Day after day he highlighted waste, even wielding a chainsaw during one public appearance.

But with Musk’s early exit, the question looms: What did DOGE accomplish?

As of May 26, DOGE says it saved taxpayers $175 billion, or about $1,087 per taxpayer. (Independent reviews, however, question those numbers.)

DOGE’s mission to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” was admirable and necessary. There is no shortage of absurd spending, including vacant federal buildings, a $465,000 landscaping contact at Maxwell Air Force Base and a multi-million-dollar USAID grant to bring Sesame Street to Iraq. When you heard about these it was easy to cheer DOGE on.

But federal bureaucracy is impervious to change, especially if change is a proposed budget cut.

Why was cutting even comically wasteful spending so hard? For one thing, our system has checks and balances. No single individual can dominate all decision making. This is a feature, not a bug.

Politics played a part. Musk feuded with cabinet members and panned President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, which diminished his influence inside the administration. Back home, people protested, unnerving members of Congress who had to defend the chainsaw approach.

Interest groups that benefit from government largesse rushed to court to block the spending cuts and mass layoffs. Agency heads and lobbyists will work overtime to restore their funding.

Yet Musk charged in with a “shut it all off, then decide what to turn back on” strategy. This gave his critics plenty of ammunition.

Early on, DOGE’s opponents struggled to make their case, often defending absurd expenditures.

But over time, a more effective narrative emerged: “I agree that government waste is a problem. I like what Elon is trying to do, just not the way he’s doing it.” Critics painted nightmare scenarios of abandoned foreign embassies and empty air traffic control centers, while the media (including government-funded NPR and PBS) emphasized the human impact of the cuts.

And now Musk is out. So, was it mission accomplished or mission failure?

I was in Washington last week and asked a wide range of people — policy experts, activists, former government employees, philanthropists — a single question: “Did DOGE succeed or fail?”

The answers were mixed.

Some pointed to the complexity of government. Cutting government waste is nothing like trimming costs at Twitter or SpaceX. One person wondered if Trump’s trade wars became a distraction. Musk should have gone after entitlement programs, which drive a great share of spending.

But others I spoke with thought Musk’s four months in government were both substantive and symbolic. He changed the conversation about waste and grift. Musk made cuts cool again, especially for Republican politicians who have forgotten fiscal restraint. He highlighted the need to follow the data and oppose bureaucrats who impede reform by controlling the flow of information.

Moving forward, Musk’s work inspired similar efforts at the state level.

The DOGE experiment offers Michigan policymakers several lessons. Find budget cuts that expose silly or misplaced government priorities. If you plan to unwind something, you’d better understand how it got there. Lawmakers must embrace their role as budgetary skeptics. It is far more effective to stop new spending or a tax increase than it is to claw back the money once it’s been taken from taxpayers and appropriated.

The easiest dollar to save is the one you don’t spend.

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