In a bid to reduce fraud and wasteful spending, DOGE has forced out tens of thousands of employees, shuttered agencies, canceled grants and contracts and upended how the U.S. carries out transactions across departments.
Social security
After protests by older Americans, the Social Security Administration (SSA), which pays out $1.4 trillion in benefits to 73 million Americans annually, still plans to mandate an in-person visit to a field office for retirees, widows and children if they are unable to make their application online, starting on April 14, Lee Dudek said, the agency’s acting commissioner.
READ: DOGE leaders Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy target 94% of remote federal workers (December 9, 2024)
However, individuals applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare or Supplemental Security Income, which includes payments to older adults with little or no income, can continue verifying their identity over the phone.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios on March 17 that “The sole mission of DOGE is to identify waste, fraud and abuse only.”
“..At Social Security, one of the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information … We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters … Almost half,” said DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi in an interview.
What is DOGE?
DOGE or the Department of Government Efficiency was created by President Donald Trump through an executive order he signed on Inauguration Day. Under the order, DOGE will be a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months until July 4, 2026, carrying out its mission.
Until now, DOGE has mostly been a covert operation — neither Elon Musk nor the administration confirming precisely who works there or exactly how many employees it has. DOGE has focused much of its initial work on canceling DEI programs.
Deployment of AI and downsizing across departments
Earlier this month, the Department of Government Efficiency deployed another “modern technology,” particularly, a proprietary chatbot called GSAi to 1,500 federal workers at the General Services Administration. This was followed by the termination of 90 technologists from GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) which is expected to continue to downsize by about 50%. A problem may be that building an effective artificial intelligence tool requires a deep understanding of the data being used to train it, which the newly instated DOGE team may not have, according to Amanda Renteria, chief executive of Code for America, a non-profit group.
Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed plans to cut 10,000 jobs at Health and Human Services, reducing costs by $1.8 billion per year by reducing staff from 82,000 to 62,000.
Trump’s vision
Additionally, following the news that an official from DOGE had some edit access to the Department of Treasury’s system, on March 25, President Trump signed an executive order promoting financial integrity, transparency, and efficiency by improving the Department of the Treasury’s ability to screen for improper payments and fraud, track transactions, and manage the Government’s disbursements as part of his bigger vision.
READ: Will Vivek Ramaswamy withdraw from DOGE? (January 20, 2025)
The Treasury is responsible for safeguarding the General Fund (sometimes referred to as “America’s Bank Account”) but currently “lacks sufficient controls to track transactions flowing through it,” according to the White House.
DOGE leader Musk said in an interview with Bret Baier, “At the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape. America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work and it’s going to be a fantastic future.”
Amidst all this, Tesla’s shares have lost a third of their value this year with recent attacks on a Tesla property.