U.S. Federal Spending For February Touches A Record $603 Billion Despite Musk’s DOGE Initiative – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)

The U.S. federal costs struck a record-breaking $603.4 billion last month, regardless of the performance drive led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

What Occurred: Regardless of Musk’s efforts to improve federal government operations through his Department of Federal Government Performance (DOGE), U.S. federal costs has actually skyrocketed to an all-time high, based on information by the U.S. Treasury.

Compared to the very same month in the previous year, costs has actually intensified by $36 billion, marking a 6.35% boost. The Month-to-month Treasury Declaration reveals that for the very first 5 months of 2025, the deficit was roughly $1.147 trillion, up from $828 billion in the very same duration the previous year.

This rise comes even as DOGE has actually made substantial inroads into numerous federal government companies, leading to many suspensions, terminations, and agreement cancellations.

Jessica Riedl, a financial policy specialist at the Manhattan Institute, informed the Financial Times, “DOGE cost savings are so little as not to be recognizable in month-to-month costs overalls.”

The Trump administration, even with DOGE’s help, has actually had a hard time to cut the size of the federal government. DOGE states to have actually conserved over $100 billion, yet just a few departments have actually reported any decreases throughout the very first total month of the brand-new administration. February information suggested that costs by the Department of Education visited $5 billion, while expense by the Department of State decreased by $2 billion.

At the very same time, February’s deficit broadened by $10.7 billion in February from the very same month in 2024, revealing very little effect from Trump’s preliminary import responsibilities on essential trading partners.

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Why It Matters: This news is available in the wake of current discoveries that DOGE had actually silently erased or modified over 1,000 agreements from its “wall of invoices,” removing more than $4 billion in declared cost savings for U.S. taxpayers. This raised concerns about the credibility of Musk’s claims relating to the efficiency of his performance drive.

Musk has actually regularly mentioned that DOGE is poised to conserve $1 trillion from the yearly federal spending plan, with expense decreases happening at a rate of $4 billion daily. Nevertheless, the Month-to-month Treasury Declaration for February revealed very little reductions in significant classifications.

DOGE continues to deal with the difficulty of acquiring broad Republican assistance for cuts. President Trump has actually just recently transferred to restrict a few of DOGE’s activities, prompting Musk to utilize a “scalpel” instead of a “hatchet.” This follows criticism from some Republican legislators over DOGE’s fast and substantial cuts.

Image through Shutterstock

Disclaimer: This material was partly produced with the aid of AI tools and was examined and released by Benzinga editors.