The skyrocketing U.S. government deficit has been a point of contention for years and grew back into electoral significance as President-Elect Donald Trump made a political alliance with Elon Musk to, in part, reduce inefficient spending.
Looking at the numbers, the move might appear not only savvy but also urgent, as the data from the Department of the Treasury (USDT) reveals that the government spent $711 billion more than it raised in the first three months of fiscal 2025.
Unlike the calendar year, the fiscal year for the Federal government starts on October 1 and ends on September 30.
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Should the deficit continue growing at the current rate, it will amount to approximately $2.84 trillion by the end of September 2025 and increase the national debt to a staggering $38.2 trillion.
Can D.O.G.E. save the U.S. from the surging deficit?
The situation is especially alarming since even Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s ambitious plans for their Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) – seen as unrealistic by many experts – call for a deficit reduction of $2 trillion.
The target reduction is widely seen as unrealistic since it would require making sweeping cuts across critical obligations such as defense, medicare, social security, and net interest – categories that together consumed about $5.5 trillion.
Furthermore, cuts would likely have to be even more radical to make a difference should the Trump administration pursue additional tax cuts. Indeed, personal income taxes constitute more than 40% of national revenue and amounted to approximately $2.43 trillion in fiscal 2024.
An average 10% cut would, therefore, reduce income by some $243 billion and, thus, require Musk and Ramaswamy to diminish expenditure by more than $2.2 trillion to have the same impact on the American deficit and debt as they hoped to with the $2 trillion cut – a cut they recently reportedly gave up on.
