Sources: USAspending.gov, GAO

If you’re a federal employee, life these days is a tornado of layoffs, anxiety, and dubious promises of rewards if you willingly leave your job, all courtesy of Elon Musk’s DOGE. 

This is supposedly an effort to save precious taxpayers dollars. But it’s also a transparently ideological place to start, since the entire federal workforce costs less than the contracts for one federal agency. Of course, that agency is the Pentagon. 

In 2022, the entire federal workforce cost $271 billion. Thirty-four percent of those employees belonged to the Pentagon itself, more than any other agency. Other agencies, like Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department, and the Agriculture Department, accounted for just four percent of the workforce each. 

Those figures remain largely unchanged today. And yet, Musk’s DOGE has been targeting those comparatively little departments - not to mention the even tinier USAID. 

In recent days, President Trump has promised that Musk would soon turn to the Pentagon. But if saving money were really the goal, the Pentagon’s contracts, worth $414 billion in FY 2022, would have been the most logical place to start. 

As it stands, it’s clear that President Trump gave his blessings for Musk and DOGE to prioritize clearing out the parts of government that provide humanitarian aid, protect consumers from being ripped off, and limit pollution in air and water. 

So far, the Pentagon and its nearly half-a-trillion dollars in contracts remain untouched.