DOGE Cut 71,000 Federal Jobs—The Fastest Since WWII—And the Deficit Is Bigger Than Ever

A June 16 Washington Times assessment concluded that President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative is “bearing fruit” in terms of raw headcount reduction, with DOGE having eliminated more than 71,000 federal civilian positions since January 2025—representing the fastest reduction in the federal workforce since the end of World War II [1]. The cuts have spanned agencies from Veterans Affairs to the National Weather Service, and in early June Trump signed an executive order making it easier to remove an additional 8,000 federal workers.

Despite the personnel reductions, overall federal spending has not declined. Because mandatory entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—account for the majority of the federal budget and remain untouched by DOGE’s authority, the gross national debt broke $39 trillion in March 2026, roughly $4.5 trillion higher than two years earlier. Adding to the administrative turbulence, the General Services Administration has begun contacting hundreds of previously terminated workers and offering reinstatement, giving employees until the end of the week to accept or decline returning to positions they were abruptly removed from months earlier [2, 3].

Why It Sucks:

Fiscal Conservatives

• Workforce was cut; the deficit wasn’t. DOGE achieved the fastest federal headcount reduction since World War II, but the national debt still broke $39 trillion because no one in Congress has been willing to touch Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid—the programs that actually drive federal spending [1, 2].
• Rehiring undercuts the entire efficiency argument. When GSA contacts workers it fired months ago and offers their jobs back on a week-long deadline, it signals that at least a meaningful share of those terminations were legally indefensible or operationally reckless—providing critics legitimate evidence that the cuts were political theater, not careful analysis [3].
• Without entitlement reform, DOGE was always a drop in the bucket. Discretionary spending—where DOGE operated—accounts for roughly 27 percent of the federal budget; cuts to workers and programs in that slice cannot materially reduce a deficit driven by mandatory outlays that Congress has explicitly refused to legislate [1, 2].

Federal Workers and Democrats

• Tens of thousands lost their livelihoods with nothing to show fiscally. Workers were terminated with little notice—many on a Friday afternoon by email—lost health insurance and retirement contributions, and now face a situation where the national debt is larger than when their jobs were cut; the human cost is real, the fiscal rationale is not [2, 3].
• Being asked to come back is its own form of institutional damage. Workers who were publicly fired in a widely covered cost-cutting campaign are now being given one week to decide whether to return; the instability signals to the entire civil service that their employment is subject to political whim rather than job performance or program need [3].
• The cuts targeted career civil servants, not structural waste. DOGE’s terminations fell heavily on experienced employees in operational roles at agencies like the Veterans Administration and the National Weather Service—not on duplicative administrative layers or identified inefficiencies; the result was disrupted public services, not streamlined government [2, 3].

Nonpartisan Deficit Watchdogs

• DOGE never had a realistic path to meaningful deficit reduction. Discretionary spending, where all of DOGE’s cuts occurred, represents less than 30 percent of the federal budget; with interest on the debt and entitlement programs left untouched, eliminating every discretionary employee in the federal government would not stabilize the long-term fiscal trajectory [1, 2].
• The debt accelerated faster after DOGE launched than before it. The gross national debt rose approximately $4.5 trillion in two years, reaching $39 trillion in March 2026; the pace of debt growth has not slowed, which means the initiative’s core fiscal premise—that cutting workers reduces the deficit—was empirically incorrect from the start [2].
• Rehiring reversals confirm the cuts were not evidence-based. Systematic government efficiency requires identifying which positions are operationally necessary before terminating them; contacting workers months later to offer reinstatement is the functional definition of a disorganized process, not a strategic restructuring of government operations [3].

Sources & Citations:

[1] Washington Times: Trump’s efforts to cut federal government’s size bearing fruit
[2] Federal News Network: A year after Trump’s DOGE cuts, workers whose lives were upended question what was saved
[3] PBS NewsHour: These federal employees were purged by DOGE. Months later, the Trump administration is asking if they want to return