said 27 Oct 2024
Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion, yeah.
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, nine days before the election, answering Howard Lutnick's question of how much DOGE could cut from the federal budget. Budget experts noted the entire discretionary budget was about $1.7 trillion. The DOGE executive order of 20 January 2025 set the unit's own termination date: 4 July 2026.
What happened: The walkdown began within ten weeks: in a 9 January 2025 X interview he called $2 trillion the "best-case outcome" with "a good shot at getting one"; by an April 2025 Cabinet meeting the figure was about $150 billion; leaving Washington in May 2025 he shifted to "over time we'll see $1 trillion." In November 2025 the OPM director told Reuters DOGE "doesn't exist" as a centralized entity, eight months before its mandate ended, and the US DOGE Service formally terminated on 4 July 2026 reporting $215 billion in savings — self-reported, without public accounting outside experts could verify, and about 11 cents of every promised dollar.
due 4 Jul 2026 · resolved 4 Jul 2026
Report of Trump MSG rally, Oct 27 2024 · archived