The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was created by President Trump on Jan. 20 with a mission to slash federal spending. Since then, the task force led by billionaire Elon Musk says it has saved more than $1 billion by canceling diversity, equity and inclusion contracts, among other expenses, according to DOGE’s social media account.
But since kicking into gear on Jan. 20, DOGE has also prompted several lawsuits and raised alarms from Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates after it gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which stores personal data for most Americans.
Supporters of DOGE see its efforts as a way to rein in bloated federal spending at a time when the nation’s outlays are outpacing its tax revenue, causing the federal debt to spiral to an all-time high of $36 trillion. Mr. Trump has said he wants to cut programs that don’t align with his policies and to slash the federal workforce.
“@DOGE is trying to STOP your tax dollars from being stolen for WASTE and FRAUD,” Musk posted on X, his social media app, on Feb. 4.
Critics of the task force say that Musk, who runs companies including SpaceX that receive billions in government contracts, could be engaged in work through DOGE that may pose conflicts of interest with his private businesses, such as potentially gaining access to data about competitors’ federal contracts.
A Feb. 3 lawsuit filed by two unions and an advocacy group for older Americans alleges that the Treasury Department has unlawfully provided Musk and DOGE with the private personal data of most U.S. taxpayers.
Here’s what to know about DOGE’s operations and its role within the Trump administration.
What is DOGE?
The acronym DOGE is a nod to Musk’s support for a cryptocurrency called dogecoin, which was created as a joke in 2021 by two software engineers and uses the image of a smiling Shiba Inu dog. (Dogecoin, whose price can be volatile, has shed about one-third of its value since Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.)
When Mr. Trump launched DOGE through an executive order last month, he housed it within the executive branch, rather than creating it as an outside advisory committee. The order said that an existing White House office called the U.S. Digital Service — a unit that primarily works on government technology projects and that exists within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — would be renamed the U.S. DOGE Service.
The executive order also noted that a DOGE team of at least four employees, which could include special government employees, would be assigned to each agency, such as the Department of Labor or the Treasury Department. Those groups were to each include one team leader, one engineer, one human resources specialist and one attorney.
Those teams are tasked with “a software modernization initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems,” according to Mr. Trump’s order. The teams would also to advise the agencies “on implementing the President’s DOGE Agenda,” the executive order states.
Setting DOGE up within an existing tech-focused unit within OMB is “quite interesting,” said Robert Burton, a former OMB official who spoke recently at a webinar about DOGE hosted by George Mason University.
“This works perfectly for DOGE’s services — it’s really the same type of mission, bringing in these really smart people from the private sector” to work on government tech, Burton said.
Is Elon Musk a government employee?
Musk is classified as a “special government employee,” Leavitt said on Feb. 3.
A special government employee, or SGE, is someone “who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period,” according to the Department of Justice.
The role, created in 1962 as a way to enable the government to tap outside expertise, can be either paid or unpaid. Because Musk — who is ranked as the world’s wealthiest person, with a fortune Bloomberg estimates at more than $400 billion — is not paid for his work as an SGE, he doesn’t need to file a public financial disclosure report.
What has DOGE done so far?
According to social media posts from DOGE and Musk, the task force is seeking to identify federal contracts and spending on issues that don’t align with Mr. Trump’s policies, including DEI and foreign aid.
“DOGE has now saved taxpayers over $1 billion in crazy DEI contracts,” Musk wrote on Jan. 30.
Musk wrote in a November opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that he and his then DOGE co-partner Vivek Ramaswamy aimed to cut $500 billion in annual federal spending. That would represent about 7% of the federal government’s $6.7 trillion in annual expenditures.
Experts warn that deep spending cuts could prove problematic, given that about two-thirds of government spending is directed toward Social Security, Medicare, national defense and Medicaid. While on the campaign trail before the 2024 presidential election, Mr. Trump vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare, which provide retirement and health benefits for millions of senior citizens.
What is DOGE doing at the Treasury?
DOGE recently sparked an outcry from some taxpayers, Democratic lawmakers and government watchdogs after it gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which is handled by a little-known unit called the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service disburses trillions in payments each year, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and federal salaries. In pointing to some ways it is saving taxpayer money, DOGE has said in social media posts that it has nixed DEI contracts at the Treasury, as well as canceled the agency’s subscriptions to the New York Times.
DOGE’s access to sensitive financial data has raised concerns about the potential for errors, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, writing in a Feb. 2 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that providing DOGE with access to the systems is “risking missteps that could result in a global financial meltdown that costs trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.”
Others have flagged data security risks tied to DOGE’s access to taxpayers’ personal information, such as bank account data and Social Security numbers.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the Feb. 3 lawsuit from the unions claimed. “Secretary Bessent’s action granting DOGE-affiliated individuals full, continuous and ongoing access to that information for an unspecified period of time means that retirees, taxpayers, federal employees, companies and other individuals from all walks of life have no assurance that their information will receive the protection that federal law affords.”
Musk “has abided by all federal laws,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Feb. 3.
What is DOGE doing with USAID?
Mr. Trump and Musk have also taken aim at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, upending an organization that provides humanitarian aid to more than 100 countries.
Both men contend that much of the 60-year-old agency’s spending is wasteful. Supporters of the agency say USAID is essential for national security, countering influence from U.S. rivals, while also providing critical humanitarian assistance across the globe.
Officials working with DOGE sought access to the Treasury’s payment system to stop money from flowing to USAID, the Associated Press reported, citing to two people familiar with the matter.
In a Feb. 4 letter to lawmakers, Treasury officials said DOGE’s technical capacity is limited to viewing payments data, while federal expenditures have not been affected.
What is DOGE doing with Social Security?
DOGE said in a Feb. 5 post on social media that the Social Security Administration had “terminated its contract for the ‘Gender X initiative marker’ and removed all references to gender ideology from public facing applications.” The task force said the effort would save about $1 million.
A potentially larger issue is DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment system because it processes the Social Security payments for more than 70 million people and contains the Social Security numbers of most Americans.
Musk and his team “now have access to the personal information of every Social Security beneficiary — and the ability to stop payments for any federal programs they dislike,” Max Richtman, CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an advocacy group for the programs, said on Feb. 3.
The Treasury says DOGE has been given “read only” access to its payment system.
contributed to this report.
