Despite the president touting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as the ultimate destroyer of wasteful federal spending, the administration has spent 6.3% more this year than it did during the same period last year under the Biden administration.

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, a weekly tracker of treasury data, total government spending has risen by $156 billion this year. When taking inflation into account, spending has still increased by $81.2 billion, Wharton professor and Budget Model director Kent Smetters told Politico.

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DOGE has claimed that it has saved the government $160 billion through its elimination of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and its quashing of entire agencies. But clearly, it has not translated to an overall reduction in federal spending.

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White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields defended the administration, telling Politico, “This isn’t easy to do in a broken system entrenched in bureaucracy and bloat, but it’s a task long overdue.”

Articles of impeachment recently filed against the president accuse him of a “sweeping abuse of power,” which includes establishing DOGE as “an Unlawful Office… unlawfully empowering Elon Musk to unilaterally violate the Constitution.”

Democrats have publicly demanded that the president confirm Musk’s departure from the White House by May 30. Musk is classified as a “special government employee” (SGE), an official designation that is only supposed to last 130 days a year. Since Musk has been working in the White House since the president’s January 20 inauguration, that date is May 30.

Speaking to reporters, Democrats criticized Musk for eliminating the funding and workforces of vital government agencies and spoke of his massive conflicts of interest questions as an SGE since several of his companies benefit from large government contracts, The Hill reported.

“Considering the repeated violations of the law by Musk and your administration, we demand an immediate public statement from your administration making clear that Musk will resign and surrender all decision-making authority, as required by law, by May 30th,”  77 Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to the president on Wednesday.  

“In his short time in government, Elon Musk has done enormous harm to working Americans,” the letter continued, adding, “While millions of Americans are suffering, Musk is continuing to enrich himself and break ethics laws.” 

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