Marking the end of his 130-day stint as a special government employee overseeing DOGE, Elon Musk said Friday that the federal bureaucracy turned the program into a “boogeyman” for budget cuts.
“What we found happening was that if there was any cut anywhere, it would be ascribed to DOGE,” Musk said at a joint press conference with President Donald Trump. “We essentially became the DOGE boogeyman.”
He criticized what he called the “banal evil of bureaucracy,” arguing that federal spending often lacks accountability because officials are spending “someone else’s money on people you don’t know.”
Musk claimed that the government operates on “complaint minimization,” where budget gatekeeping is abandoned to avoid internal friction. “The manager will say it's not worth the trouble, just pay it anyway. It happens over and over again,” he said.
DOGE, a cost-efficiency initiative, was effort spearheaded by Musk to cut waste, abuse, and fraud.
Read the complete excerpt below (slightly edited for clarity):
What we found happening was that if there was any cut anywhere, it would be ascribed to DOGE. We essentially became the DOGE boogeyman. There are many things that occur in the government because it's the banal evil of bureaucracy. Frankly, the largely uncaring nature of bureaucracy. Money is spent most cruelly when it is someone else's money being spent on people you don't know. That's how federal spending is.
And you can't blame individuals. The way the government works is complaint minimisation. Even when someone within the government tries to stop the money being spent, there's usually someone that complains. And then the manager will say it's not worth the trouble, just pay it anyway. Then, it happens over and over again.
