Thousands of licensed civil servants, almost completely sanded budgets, canceled subsidies … placed at the head of a department of government efficiency, the DOGE, by Donald Trump since his inauguration in January, Elon Musk has promised to decide drastically in American federal finances. The stake? Make significant savings to reduce the country’s deficit. The billionaire, at the head of Tesla and Space X, set aside to recover $ 1,000 billion thanks to the action of his ministry.
A month and a half after Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House, many civil servants are worried about having to leave their post with this historic budget cut. At the start of the week, the 4,100 employees of the Ministry of Education, a recurring target of the Republican, learned that almost half of them were going to be fired soon. Certain agencies, such as USAID, linked to the State Department and responsible for distributing American humanitarian aid abroad, are preparing to lose almost all of their missions. So many measures, sometimes brutal, which even begin to be disputed by part of the republican camp.
Federal expenses increasing in February
If Elon Musk indeed has the ambition to “truncate” the federal bureaucracy to prevent “bankruptcy”, difficult for the moment to perceive the effects of its action. The American Treasury published on Son websiteTuesday, March 12, the monthly public finance figures of the United States. And the results are not to the advantage of the boss’ first actions: over the last month of February, the country spent more at the federal level (603 billion dollars) than over the same period a year earlier, in February 2024 ($ 567 billion).
How to explain these figures in contrast to the hyperactivity of the businessman to continue to reduce the expenses of the ministries? First element of response: all the measures presented by the Trumpist camp in recent weeks have not yet been materialized in the figures of the American treasury. The announcements concerning the Ministry of Education were also detailed a few days ago. This latency time between the formalization of budget cut decisions and their real application can potentially cause a delay before seeing their effects affect the Treasury data.
On the other hand, it is interesting to immerse yourself in the details of the figures provided by the American agency to learn from other lessons from these sums. For Jessica Riedl, Manhattan Institute analyst interviewed by the Financial Timesthe savings made by DOGE are in any case “too small to be identifiable in the total monthly amounts” of expenses for each ministry. Above all, specifies this expert in the British daily, “around 75 % of American federal spending is devoted to social security, the Medicaid, the Medicare, the Defense, the Veterans and in interest – none of this has yet been affected”.
Uncertainty reigns
Until now, only ministries in the often less substantial budget (education, state department, environment, etc.) have actually been targeted by the Doge cuts. It is by comparing the figures of the treasure of February 2025 with those of February 2024 that we can see a little better the first directions given by Elon Musk and Donald Trump in the American budget. Between these two years, the monthly expenses allocated to La Défense, for example, remained stable ($ 65 billion).
On the other hand, those concerning internal security, an area erected as a priority by the American president, climbed $ 15 billion (90 billion in February 2024, against 105 in February 2025). To a lesser extent, the budgets of departments related to social security, veterans or even health, have also increased more or less over this period. Others, such as transport or NASA, have seen their level of expenses remain stable.
But maybe not for a long time: the American space agency announced on Tuesday that it would start a procedure of “workforce reduction”. Katherine Calvin, a scientist specializing in the climate attached to it, has just been dismissed, like 22 others of her colleagues. What will be the next ministries to see new budget cuts fall on them? The uncertainties remain on the next actions carried out by the DOGE. The “unusual confidentiality” of the exchanges which take place within the structure has just led a judge to order Elon Musk and his teams to make public the files on which they work.