Here Are the 5 Most Controversial Examples of Gov't Waste Uncovered by DOGE (So Far)

The left isn't at all happy with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and they are pretty vocal about it. Now, think about that for a moment; the left, both in government and the legacy media, are against reducing government waste and against making government more efficient.

This is a big part of what President Trump ran on, of course, and he and Elon Musk laid out their plans for DOGE very clearly in the campaign; Donald Trump won, so I guess that tells you something about where the American public stands.

Elon Musk wasted no time digging in. He's found some shocking examples of waste, and no doubt, plenty of graft. Here are five of the biggest instances of government waste - so far.

Musk revealed this week that DOGE is investigating a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where federal employee retirements are processed manually.
"Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months," Musk announced on X.

Why is this still being done on paper? My wife went through the Veterans Affairs' (VA) disability process some years ago, and it took over a year; almost two, if memory serves. Is this why--a bunch of people working in the dark down a mine shaft are still processing these things on paper? Why not buy a half-dozen modern PCs and automate the whole thing?

Data security, I'm sure, is a concern - so, air-gap them. It's not rocket science. The financial sector and the national intelligence apparatus know about data security (I hope!) Take a cue from them. Next up:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), inspired by DOGE's crackdown on federal spending, said it had located $20 billion in tax dollars within the agency that the Biden administration reportedly "knew they were wasting."
"An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day," EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted to X on Wednesday, citing another video from December.

This is likely an artifact of the federal government's "Use it or lose it" budgeting. Seriously, these agencies should be rewarded for saving the taxpayers a few bucks; instead, their incentives are to spend, spend, spend at the end of the fiscal year to avoid a cut in the next year. That's idiotic.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Finds the $20 Billion 'Gold Bars' the Biden Administration Tried to Jettison

Then there's spending on illegal immigration, which is offensive on several levels besides just the financial:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government's leading disaster-relief arm, gave over $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels just last week, DOGE uncovered.

At least the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was able to recover that waste. On now to DHS:

One day after the spending was uncovered by DOGE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that "Secretary [Krisit] Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels," a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

This is a special outrage. Not only is FEMA wasting American taxpayer dollars, it's wasting them providing free housing for people who are in the country illegally. That money could go to better uses, like helping American veterans who are struggling with housing issues. Or - nobody ever seems to bring this up - we could just not spend it at all.

The Pentagon isn't immune from wasteful spending - oh, far from it. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth knows it--and has invited a DOGE audit:

The Defense Business Board found in 2015 that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years by renegotiating service contracts and consolidating bureaucratic processes.
A congressional inquiry in 2018 found the Air Force was spending $1,300 for each reheatable coffee cup aboard one of its aircraft. The Air Force spent $32,000 replacing 25 cups, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
A two-year audit by the Defense Department Inspector General last year found that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers. They overpaid by $149,072.

He said:

Trump's new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said he welcomes DOGE at the Department of Defense.
"We will partner with them. It's long overdue. The Defense Department's got a huge budget, but it needs to be responsible," Hegseth told Fox News.

That's the proper attitude, and it seems to be shared by the rest of President Trump's cabinet; the bureaucracy's another story.

And, of course, there's USAID, which rightfully and constitutionally shouldn't exist at all:

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman, who says she speaks to Musk about spending cuts every few days, recently published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years.
Ernst described "wasteful and dangerous" spending that had gripped taxpayers until DOGE stepped in.
Ernst highlighted that the agency "authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq."
Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq" in an effort to "promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups."

You just can't make this stuff up.

The DOGE effort is not only horrendously overdue, but we have arrived at the point with annual federal deficits and the national debt where swinging this DOGE axe is a matter of national survival. The path we are on is unsustainable; $36 trillion in debt, annual federal deficits in the trillions, we may already be past the point of no return. It will take dramatic action to extricate ourselves from the fiscal hole we're in, and the DOGE is leading the way in that essential first step: Stop digging.

But it's going to take much more than what's been done so far. What Musk's group has uncovered to date is the tip of an iceberg far larger than the one that sank the Titanic. Everything will have to be on the table - entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, and, yes, Social Security. Washington's wasteful ways have brought us to this. The national debt can't just be halted; it has to be reversed, and that will take dramatic action - if it happens at all.