There is a real human cost behind cold, calculated “efficiency.”
Elon Musk and his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE (which is not yet a Congressionally authorized federal agency) spent the first part of 2025 ramming through steep funding cuts to various federal agencies, with the blessing of President Donald Trump.
On DOGE’s official .gov website, Musk’s effort claims to have saved taxpayers $170 billion so far, and breaks it down to more than $1,000 saved per taxpayer. It’s worth noting that during a speech at a Trump campaign rally in October of 2024, Musk promised to slash $2 trillion in federal spending. He later revised that figure to $1 trillion, though he eventually said during a Cabinet meeting that DOGE’s target was closer to $150 billion in savings. And even that figure is questionable.
According to the New York Times, DOGE’s accounting methods are vague, and Musk’s supposed cost-cutting measures often include “billion-dollar errors” like counting money that isn’t on track to be spent until next fiscal year, and sometimes even guessing about how money might eventually be spent. And on DOGE.gov’s so-called “wall of receipts,” the Times found that it offered no details behind $92 billion of claimed savings – which makes up more than 60% of the total amount of supposed savings listed.
In fact, DOGE’s effort to save money for taxpayers itself may ultimately end up costing taxpayers almost as much as the money it claimed to save. CBS News reported that the Partnership for Public Service (PSP), which is a non-partisan nonprofit organization focused on the federal civil service, found that DOGE’s efforts have cost approximately $135 billion.
The PSP came to that figure by calculating the cost of putting tens of thousands of federal workers on paid leave, re-hiring workers that it mistakenly fired (like the workers who handle the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal), and lost productivity in the various government agencies that experienced mass firings. That figure is likely a conservative estimate, as it didn’t account for legal costs associated with lawsuits against DOGE for illegal firings, and lost tax revenue as a result of DOGE’s rampage through the Internal Revenue Service.
Aside from the multiple legal boondoggles DOGE has created, the lack of actual savings to taxpayers, and an overall less efficient government, Musk’s effort has also resulted in real, actual harm to human beings. And the families of those impacted deserve real answers and accountability.
DOGE cuts are killing Americans
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof blasted Musk and DOGE in an April tweet, in which he posted a photo of a South Sudanese boy named Evan Anzoo. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), through its PEPFAR program (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) supplied Anzoo with HIV treatment medication that cost roughly 12 cents per day. But after DOGE gutted USAID, Anzoo’s supply of medication was suddenly cut off, and he died. Kristof reminded Musk that his goal of putting USAID “into the wood chipper” meant that children like Anzoo would pay the price with their lives. But the human toll of Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government can now be seen much closer to home.
In my home state of Kentucky, 19 people are now dead as of this writing after a tornado ripped through their community in the middle of the night. More deaths could be reported in the coming days and weeks as many people injured from the tornadoes are currently listed in critical condition. Those people might still be alive were it not for Musk and DOGE.
As the Times reported just one day before the tornadoes ravaged Kentucky, the National Weather Service’s (NWS) office in Jackson, Kentucky (which serves the Central and Southeastern parts of the state and parts of Southwestern Virginia doesn’t have an overnight weather forecaster. Likewise, the Washington Post reported the day before the tornadoes hit Southeastern Kentucky that the Jackson NWS office “is already closing for the overnight hours” for the foreseeable future:
“In four of the agency’s 122 weather forecasting offices around the country, there aren’t enough meteorologists to staff an overnight shift, according to the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a union representing agency workers,” the Post reported on May 16. “And at least several more forecast offices are expected to stop staffing an overnight shift as early as Sunday.
“Each of the offices has local knowledge about weather hazards and geographic features that helps improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and warnings and inform local officials’ decisions to close schools for wintry weather or evacuate residents ahead of hurricanes. Without a meteorologist working overnight, those offices’ duties to monitor conditions and issue forecasts and warnings will temporarily pass to neighboring offices each night, said Tom Fahy, the union’s legislative director.”
USA TODAY reported in March that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees the NWS, was laying off 1,029 workers. While a mass email to NOAA staff said there were no weather forecasters included in the March layoffs, it noted that the final determination about what positions would be eliminated would ultimately be up to the Department of Commerce (the parent agency for NOAA). A CNN article from late February reported that several hundred NOAA employees who were fired worked on weather forecasting.
It remains unknown exactly when the Jackson, Kentucky office lost its overnight weather forecaster, but the people dead in Kentucky — roughly a dozen and a half adult men and women between the ages of 25 and 76 — may very well be a consequence of that position being left open by DOGE’s slapdash “efficiency” measures.
In early April, while responding to spring flooding that hit the capital city of Frankfort, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) stressed the importance of NOAA and NWS’ work in helping to inform residents about imminent weather emergencies.
“When you look at the National Weather Service, one of the reasons that we haven't lost more people is that they're there,” Beshear told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "They're doing the forecast. They're helping our meteorologists and us in the state, they helped us be prepared."
Notably, the second-term Democratic governor added that cuts to the NWS “will cause people to lose their lives.”
Lexington, Kentucky Fox affiliate WDKY reported that the tornadoes ripped through Laurel and Pulaski Counties sometime between 11:30 PM and 1:00 AM. The bulk of the deaths were in Laurel County, which experienced an EF-2 tornado (wind speeds between 111 and 135 miles per hour). We’ll unfortunately never know if the dead received an alert on their phone about a tornado warning, but it’s likely that without an overnight forecaster at the Jackson NWS office, some of those killed last week may have died in their sleep without ever getting a chance to get to safety.
Government weather forecasting was already efficient and saved lives
It’s a fact that early warnings can save lives, as seen after tornadoes tore through the Midwest in November 2013:
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CBS News reported that meteorologists “were able to accurately predict the path of the storms. Television and radio warnings, text-message alerts and storm sirens warned people in time to take cover.”
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Former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ilinois) recalled to Politico how his phone was “alerting” ahead of a spate of tornadoes that pummeled the Midwest. He also attributed the “minimal” loss of life to early warning systems that gave residents a crucial window to move out of the danger zone.
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An Associated Press report on that same storm cluster praised forecasters’ “uncannily accurate predictions — combined with television and radio warnings, text-message alerts and storm sirens — [that] almost certainly saved lives as rare late-season tornadoes dropped out of a dark autumn sky.”
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NPR’s report on that storm system also lauded “early warnings delivered by text message” that likely helped save lives.
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Accuweather Senior Vice President Mike Smith wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that “accomplished scientists and dedicated volunteers saved the lives of more than 250 people” due to early warning systems. He explained that he came to that figure by comparing the small number of deaths in 2013 to a 1965 storm that hit that same region and killed 267 people.
I can also offer a more recent anecdotal example of the advantage of early warning systems: This spring, my girlfriend and I were hosting her family for dinner at our home in Louisville, Kentucky when a storm system moved through the area. All of us received an alert on our phone that had the same notification sound as an Amber Alert, issued by the NWS’ Louisville office. We all went into the basement and watched our local news channels cover the storm and didn’t go back upstairs until they gave the all-clear.
When attributing blame for deaths as a result of extreme weather, the impact of climate change can’t be ignored. It’s a well-documented fact that climate change causes hotter summers, colder winters, and more extreme weather patterns. But it’s still important to state for the record that some of the 19 (and possibly more) Kentuckians who died last week may have been saved by early warnings, had Jackson’s NWS office been properly staffed. And DOGE has harshly impacted Kentucky in numerous other ways that could prove deadly further down the road,
This may only be the beginning of what could be a particularly deadly year, as the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is due to begin in June. The Trump administration’s new Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator has already admitted that FEMA is not ready for this hurricane season, and should there be a major landfall hurricane this summer or fall, reliable forecasts from the NWS will be all the more critical for saving lives.
A more efficient government starts and ends with the Pentagon
If saving money and efficiency is the true goal, no meaningful savings will come from firing weather forecasters whose starting salary is just $70,000 per year, according to Glassdoor data. Any effort to curb wasteful government spending should start at the Pentagon, as the Department of Defense (DoD) admitted in 2022 that it was unable to properly account for 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. Any government agency that has such poor fiscal management should be seen as a glaring red flag for inefficiency.
The National Priorities Project, or NPP — a nonprofit research organization nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize — reported in November that the DoD has failed to pass an audit yet again, for the seventh consecutive year. Out of 28 separate entities audited (like the Navy, the Coast Guard, and others), only nine had a clean audit. To date, the Pentagon remains the last federal agency that has yet to pass an audit. The DoD has a legal requirement to pass an audit by Fiscal Year 2028, though Breaking Defense reported that the Pentagon’s chief financial officer is not optimistic about that deadline.
Musk has repeatedly said DOGE is dedicated to rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government. But what do you call it when a federal agency with a budget in excess of $800 billion has failed for seven years in a row to keep track of so much money? According to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – the investigative arm of Congress — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over its projected cost, making it the most expensive weapons system in history. Over the course of its lifetime, the F-35 is projected to cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion to buy, operate and maintain the aircraft.
Additionally, the Pentagon has demonstrated a pattern of massively overpaying for spare parts. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) found in 2022 that vendors have routinely overcharged the DoD for various parts for at least 20 years. In 1998, one unnamed company charged the Pentagon more than $85 for electrical wiring insulation, compared to just $8.51 for the Air Force, meaning taxpayers paid over $12,870 more than they should have. POGO also found multiple Office of the Inspector General audits that showed the Pentagon getting overcharged by well-known military contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, along with smaller players like TransDigm.
The NPP suggested that Congress pass the Audit the Pentagon Act, which would slash the budget of any DoD entity that fails to pass a clean audit. While it’s unlikely that President Trump would sign that bill into law, lawmakers championing the bill could use that as a cudgel to use against the administration and undermine its claims that its cuts are about “efficiency” rather than simply the deconstruction of the administrative state and the hollowing out of the commons.
As taxpayers, we deserve a government that works well and spends our money carefully. But we also deserve a government that prioritizes human lives above numbers on spreadsheets. Any version of “efficiency” that cruelly condemns human beings to death and suffering should be roundly rejected, and cold-hearted number-crunchers should be made to answer to everyone who has lost loved ones to their indifference.
Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA TODAY, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.
