DOGE didn't save taxpayers $1 trillion, after all
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to recent reporting, DOGE fell short of its goals to save taxpayers $1 trillion and streamline government processes. So what did we get from the agency?
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Transcript
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| 0:55.9 | This is On Point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. |
| 0:59.0 | Well, it's January 20th, exactly one year to the day when President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term. |
| 1:06.1 | And throughout this last campaign, Trump, his surrogates and his advisors made some form of the guarantee that many, many politicians make. |
| 1:15.5 | Promises made, promises kept. |
| 1:18.5 | Well, today we wanted to focus on whether Trump has kept one of the biggest promises he made during the 2024 campaign, |
| 1:25.4 | a kind of drain the swamp dream on steroids. |
| 1:29.1 | The promise was led by one of Trump's advisors and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. |
| 1:34.8 | Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. |
| 1:38.8 | So from a nominal deficit of two trillion to try cut the deficit in half to one trillion, |
| 1:44.0 | or looked at it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from of two trillion to try cut the deficit in half to one trillion, or looked at it |
| 1:45.1 | in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from $7 trillion to $6 trillion. |
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