By Cat Zakrzewski, Matt Viser, Emily Davies, Elizabeth Dwoskin · The Washington Post (c) 2025
Elon Musk arrived at the White House prepared to take a chain saw to the federal government, promising to slash $2 trillion in spending.
A little more than 100 days later, the world’s richest man is retreating from Washington far short of that goal after an often painful education in the mechanics of the U.S. government.
As Musk prepares to return to his private companies in coming weeks, he and his allies are increasingly pressing for Congress to take up the mantle of their government cost-cutting. But that effort faces an uncertain future in a largely frozen Congress that has passed few bills since President Donald Trump took office in January.
In a meeting with reporters Wednesday, Musk boasted about the U.S. DOGE Service’s success but appeared sober about its future. He estimated the project will save $160 billion in fiscal year 2026, but that tally lacks many specific details. Musk said those savings are “pretty good,” even though it was only a fraction of his initial promise, which he said would take a long road to reach.
“How much pain is the Cabinet and this Congress willing to take?” he said to reporters in the Roosevelt Room. “Because it can be done, but it requires dealing with a lot of complaints.”
Musk said he is planning to meet in the next week with lawmakers in the DOGE caucuses from the House and Senate, underscoring how his attention has, in part, shifted to finding ways to codify the many cuts and changes he has tried to make to the federal bureaucracy.
David Sacks, a close friend of Musk and the White House’s AI and crypto czar, said it is now up to Washington politicians to act on Musk’s findings.
“At the end of the day, in order to capture the savings here, we do need those appropriations eliminated from the budget,” Sacks said on an episode of the “All In” podcast that aired Saturday. “It’s not up to DOGE to do that. It’s up to these old bulls in Congress who control the appropriations process.”
States, labor unions, local governments and nonprofit organizations have launched a legal blitzkrieg against many of the Trump administration’s efforts to cut the scale and size of the federal workforce, arguing that Congress needs to approve these actions. DOGE’s strategy has also always involved seeking favorable decisions in the courts that could allow the agency to have lasting influence, while bypassing Congress’s role in setting federal spending, said two people familiar with the development of the initiative,who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail theprivate discussions.
After early losses in some of those cases, DOGE is also seeking an enduring impact through Congress, which controls the federal budget and has traditionally been involved in government cost-cutting efforts. Musk on Wednesday said DOGE has made “more progress” than any initiative since the Clinton administration, which ran a years-long process to reduce government waste in part through signing bipartisan congressional legislation into law. Multiple judges have restrained DOGE’s efforts to withhold government funds and dismantle agencies, with some finding that DOGE is violating the Constitution.
Musk’s move to spend less time in Washington leaves a vacuum atop DOGE – which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency – even though he’s not technically its director, as no other figure at the office wields the same social media bully pulpit or access to Trump. Musk is expected to remain very involved in DOGE from afar, but he did not explicitly say who would take the reins as he scales back his day-to-day work. Musk has key allies in the White House who could continue to support his initiative, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
“Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?” Musk said when pressed on the plans for his succession. “Was it not stronger after he passed away?”
At the Hill and Valley Forum, a conference focused on connecting Silicon Valley and Washington, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said Wednesday that Congress needed to act to ensure the changes DOGE has made aren’t overturned amid political changes in Washington. Ernst,the chair of the Senate DOGE caucus, has introduced several bills aligned with DOGE initiatives, such as updating the Treasury Department’s payment system. Still, she acknowledgedthe nascent caucus was entirely composed of Republicans.
“We do have some Democrats that operate around the fringes,” she said. “They just don’t want their names associated with DOGE right now.”
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll this week found that Americans have mixed views on whether the Trump administration is actually limiting government spending, and Americans increasingly disapprove of Musk. The poll found that 35 percent of Americans approve of the way Musk is handling his job in the Trump administration, while 57 percent disapprove.
Many Democrats have used Musk as a foil in their efforts to criticize the Trump administration. But Musk continues to have allies in the Republican Party, even as some lawmakers raise concerns about cuts that could negatively impact their states. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) said he would give Musk’s effort an A-plus.
“He’s a rock star,” said Kennedy, who supports passing legislation that would formalize the cuts that DOGE has made so far. “He has changed the conversation in Washington.”
While much of the initial focus of DOGE has been on cutting government programs, the project was also intended to modernize government technology systems.
“With DOGE, it’s either the most mundane systems stuff or they’re deleting entire agencies,” said Sam Hammond, the chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, a group that has made recommendations to DOGE. “My hope is it snaps back to more of the former going forward.”
A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private plans, said there are discussions underway about ways that DOGE can “streamline” inefficient government systems, including conversations with large companies such as Amazon and Microsoft.
“There are some departments who have used different software, and it’s not compatible with another department within the same agency,” the person said, explaining that DOGE is working on ensuring different government databases are working together.
Musk on Wednesday acknowledged that the time he spent at DOGE has come with some personal costs. His electric-vehicle company Tesla in April reported a stunning 71 percent plunge in profits compared with the first quarter of 2024. Musk said that his experience in the government has been fun about 60 or 70 percent of the time, noting that he does not like to see people protesting his moves at DOGE by burning Tesla vehicles.
At Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Cabinet members clapped for the billionaire as Trump acknowledged the contributions Musk made in the first 100 days of the administration. Musk tinkered with his baseball hats during the meeting, stacking his “Gulf of America” hat on top of a DOGE hat.
“Mr. President, they say I wear a lot of hats,” he said. “Even my hat has a hat.”
Going forward at DOGE, some allies expect Musk to adopt tactics similar to those he uses for his businesses.
“The thing that makes Elon uniquely successful is not being a great manager of a complex system,” but rather that he delegates minutiae to focus on the bigger picture, said a person who has helped craft DOGE’s strategy who was not authorized to speak publicly. “And he can continue to do that from afar,” the person said.
Over at the Hill and Valley conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, attendees were optimistic about DOGE’s performance, arguing that entrenched government systems needed to be broken up with a radical program.
“It’s a forcing function for people to look to do things in a different way,” said Randy Hayes, vice president of public sector for the AI company Vast. “Things need to be broken up.” He added that he felt empathy for many people who had lost their jobs.
Some saw the changing landscape in Washington as an opportunity for tech companies to expand contracting beyond the space and defense industries.
“It feels like it’s sort of a new topic for the government to be thinking about more basic technologies and the way that they should be looking to commercial industry,” said Delian Asparouhov, a co-founder of the conference and a partner at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm linked to Peter Thiel.
But some told The Washington Post they thought DOGE’s record was mixed. Few wanted to speak publicly about it.
– – –
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.