Why Musk Skipped Over US Military Excess In His DOGE Efficiency Goals

Over Memorial Day Weekend, 37,000 flags planted on Boston Common were a solemn tribute to Massachusetts’ state war dead through the generations. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Veterans Administration (VA) employees were in shock as they prepared for deep staffing cuts. VA reductions in force clearly will severely damage care and reduce benefits for millions of the nation’s former service members. Why doesn’t military excess take precedence over cuts to US veterans’ services? Military excess is an actual over-inflated area of federal spending that can use some serious scrutiny.

Elon Musk was the mastermind behind the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and was charged with cutting federal fraud and inefficiency. This group of non-federal employees insisted that government waste was strangling the US economy, but the redistribution of funds hasn’t actually made the US federal government more efficient — it’s targeted to benefit the über wealthy and their insatiable appetite for accumulating larger and larger portfolios.

In February, the Pentagon had proposed cutting 8% of its budget in each of the next five years — amounting to some $50 billion each year. It had also prioritized 17 areas, from drones and submarines to military assistance for the southern border as well as increased funding for the US command that focuses on China. The Pentagon employs 3 million troops and civilians.

The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget proposal includes a significant increase in defense spending: a discretionary base budget of $1.01 trillion is in the works. Republicans are advancing a plan to add up to $150 billion for the Pentagon as part of the party’s megabill on spending and tax cuts. But that increase is spread over a decade — not enough, defense-oriented Republicans are arguing, according to Politico.

Trump has indicated that at least some of the new spending would come from savings found by cuts ordered by the DOGE, although particular accounts haven’t been identified.

“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk complained in a Washington Post interview dated May 27. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

Dov Zakheim, who served as Pentagon comptroller during the administration of George W. Bush, noted that, while there has been a steep increase in military personnel over the last two decades, “We have nowhere near the same level of military operation.” Zakheim acknowledged that there can be budget cuts to trim US military excess. “The issue is how the cuts are made,” Zakhein explained. “Too often ‘cut drills’ involve cutting the most promising new developments while protecting legacy systems.”

SpaceX: A Pentagon Funding Favorite

A Letter to the Editor on the Boston Globe site offered a cogent explanation why Elon Musk didn’t begin to come near his promised federal spending reduction goals. “He studiously avoided looking where the money is,” Chris Patton wrote, “in bloated, wasteful, mismanaged military spending.”

When we look at the Big Picture of US military excess, it is a wonder how any fiscal manager could exempt the Pentagon from federal funding cuts.

• Last November, the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row.
• The year prior, it admitted that it couldn’t account for more than half of its $4 trillion in assets.
• From 1998 to 2015, there were $21 trillion of unaccounted-for financial adjustments on the Pentagon’s books. (Those numbers weren’t available until 2018.)

“This is where one would look if one were serious about finding waste, fraud, and abuse,” Patton concludes. According to the budget framework, or “skinny budget” document, “the President’s topline discretionary budget holds the line on total spending while providing unprecedented increases for defense” which “would be made possible through budget reconciliation.”

The caveat, of course, is that Musk depends on military contracts for SpaceX. So, instead of cuts to mitigate military excess, Musk says he plans to focus DOGE’s efforts on improving the federal bureaucracy’s computer systems. It’s a goal that is more appealing to the masses than decimating the federal workforce — and the defense industry is smiling, too.

Meanwhile, several federal agencies that were investigating Elon Musk’s companies have become the target of the Trump administration and Musk’s DOGE.

• The Department of Labor, which oversees the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had over a dozen open investigations into Tesla and SpaceX regarding alleged unfair
  labor practices, safety violations, and discriminatory work practices.
• Consumers have submitted over 300 complaints about Tesla to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• The USAID Inspector General initiated a probe into Starlink satellite terminals provided to the government of Ukraine.
• The Federal Aviation Administration had ordered SpaceX to carry out a formal investigation into the loss of a Starship vehicle during a test flight, and previously ordered over $630,000 in civil penalties against SpaceX.

Patton muses that winding down some of the hundreds of military bases that the US maintains around the world would be a good starting place to rein in the Pentagon. It would also begin to unveil the man behind the curtain, who, again, used double-speak after yesterday’s Starship spun out of control once it reached space. It wasn’t a big deal that Starship failed to return to Earth in one piece, Musk assured everyone.

“Big improvement over last flight!” Musk tweeted on X, promising a test flight once every three or four weeks in the coming months. “Lot of good data to review.”

Final Thoughts: Military Excess, Veterans, and Trump’s Birthday Parade

On June 14, a day originally planned to mark the 250th birthday of the US Army with a festival along the National Mall, Trump is throwing himself one whopper of a party. A parade will co-star with 28 Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles, four Paladin howitzers, towed artillery, and multiple infantry squad vehicles. Of course, there will be a military flyover, but, always the showman, Trump has asked for 50 or so military helicopters. The finale will find a member of the Army’s Golden Knights parachuting down to the Ellipse to present Trump with a folded flag.

The Army estimates the cost of the extravaganza at $25 million to $45 million.

The Trump administration thus far successfully has pushed for increases in military expenditures — largely for shipbuilding, munitions, and a missile shield system known colloquially as the Golden Dome. But Trump has also vowed, “We love our veterans. We’re gonna take good care of them.”

With almost 500,000 employees, the VA is the second-largest federal agency behind the Department of Defense and is in charge of providing health care to more than 9 million veterans through 170 VA medical centers and 1,193 outpatient clinics.

“Things need to change,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said earlier this year. “President Trump has a mandate for generational change in Washington, and that’s exactly what we’re going to deliver at the VA.”

Dozens of internal emails obtained by ProPublica reveal a far different reality. Doctors and others at VA hospitals and clinics across the country have been sending often desperate messages to headquarters detailing how cuts will harm veterans’ care.

VHA Medical Centers provide a wide range of services, including traditional hospital-based services such as surgery, critical care, mental health, orthopedics, pharmacy, radiology, and physical therapy. Additional medical and surgical specialty services include audiology & speech pathology, dermatology, dental, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, podiatry, prosthetics, urology, and vision care.

Isn’t the Trump administration and Musk’s DOGE focusing on the wrong type of military force?

Featured image: “US Army Best Warrior Competition [Image 2 of 47]” by DVIDSHUB, licensed under CC BY 2.0.