SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s efforts at President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have revealed a number of examples of government waste that have dominated headlines in recent weeks, as his team continues to audit the federal government despite Democrat opposition.
Here are some of the top-lines from DOGE’s findings:
Musk reveals ‘Iron Mountain’ mine nightmare
Musk revealed this week that DOGE is investigating a limestone mine in Pennsylvania where federal employee retirements are processed manually.
“Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months,” Musk announced on X.
Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts have uncovered several examples of wasteful spending. (Getty,AP.DOGE/X.)
Musk said only 10,000 federal employees can retire a month because it takes so long to process the paperwork and sort through the millions of manila envelopes. He described the “Iron Mountain” mine as a “time warp” slowing down a completely manual federal retirement process.
This photo, posted by DOGE on Feb. 11, 2025, shows the old limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, where the organization says about 700 workers operate more than 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 federal retirement applications per month. (DOGE / X)
“The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal government. The elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?” Musk told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
DOGE-inspired EPA locates $20 billion in waste
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), inspired by DOGE’s crackdown on federal spending, said it had located $20 billion in tax dollars within the agency that the Biden administration reportedly “knew they were wasting.”
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin exposed $20 billion in wasteful spending at the agency. (Al Drago)
“An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted to X on Wednesday, citing another video from December.
The EPA found that just eight agencies were controlling the distribution of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to different entities “at their discretion,” such as the Climate United Fund, which reportedly received just under $7 billion.
“The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars, and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,” Zeldin said, vowing to recover the “gold bars” that were found “parked at an outside financial institution.”
Signage at the headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C. (Reuters)
Zeldin said that the “scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”
In a Fox News interview, the EPA administrator praised DOGE’s work at the agency and said that the cost-cutting department is “making us better.”
“They come up with great recommendations, and we can make a decision to act on it,” Zeldin said.
DHS clawing back
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government’s leading disaster-relief arm, gave over $59 million to house illegal immigrants in luxury New York City hotels just last week, DOGE uncovered.
Migrants are seen sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service)
The spending was exposed by Musk on Monday, who wrote in a post on X that “sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” which put FEMA under review to improve the agency’s “efficacy, priorities and competence.”
Of the $59.3 million, $19 million was for direct hotel costs, while the balance funded other services such as food and security, a New York City Hall spokesperson confirmed to Fox.
One day after the spending was uncovered by DOGE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that “Secretary [Krisit] Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Asylum seekers line up in front of the historic Roosevelt Hotel, converted into a city-run shelter for newly arrived migrant families in New York City. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency)
Shortly afterward, Trump, in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, suggested that FEMA should be abolished.
“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,” the president declared.
“THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!” the president added.
Pentagon wasted thousands on coffee cups and soap dispensers
The Pentagon’s $850 billion budget could be next up on the bureaucratic chopping block. Fox News Digital reported this week accusations of waste and inefficiency within the U.S.’s largest discretionary budget.
The Defense Business Board found in 2015 that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years by renegotiating service contracts and consolidating bureaucratic processes.
A congressional inquiry in 2018 found the Air Force was spending $1,300 for each reheatable coffee cup aboard one of its aircraft. The Air Force spent $32,000 replacing 25 cups, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
A two-year audit by the Defense Department Inspector General last year found that Boeing overcharged the Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers. They overpaid by $149,072.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivers remarks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Pentagon on Feb. 5 in Arlington, Va. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump’s new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said he welcomes DOGE at the Department of Defense.
“We will partner with them. It’s long overdue. The Defense Department’s got a huge budget, but it needs to be responsible,” Hegseth told Fox News.
Questionable spending in USAID’s $40 billion budget, including ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman, who says she speaks to Musk about spending cuts every few days, recently published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years.
Ernst described “wasteful and dangerous” spending that had gripped taxpayers until DOGE stepped in.
Sen. Joni Ernst highlighted that USAID “authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.” (Getty Images)
Ernst highlighted that the agency “authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.”
Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called “Ahlan Simsim Iraq” in an effort to “promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.”
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Several more examples of questionable spending have been uncovered at USAID, including more than $900,000 to a “Gaza-based terror charity” called Bayader Association for Environment and Development and a $1.5 million program slated to “advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.”
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
