White House Budget Request Includes $45 Million in Additional DOGE Funding

The Trump administration is seeking $45 million in funding for the Department of Government Efficiency next year, offering a hint of work to come even as Elon Musk steps back from the initiative.

The administration’s budget request includes provisions for 150 DOGE employees, the majority of whom would be classified as reimbursable and funded by agencies. But an estimated $6 million would be set aside for compensation of the 30 employees directly paid from DOGE.

The White House is asking for $10 million for a “software modernization initiative,” and an additional $35 million would come from agencies reimbursing DOGE for services, a setup that the U.S. Digital Service was using before President Donald Trump remade the organization into DOGE. That’s in addition to $22 million left over from this year.

The budget documents released last week point to DOGE’s work on technology and software, stating that DOGE “transforms Federal technology and software, driving unprecedented efficiency and productivity.”

Even so, some government modernization work — like an effort to improve how the CDC tracks disease data — has suffered from the administration’s push to shrink the size of the government’s workforce.

The high-profile DOGE work has been done by those in the temporary DOGE organization or associates installed within agencies, as opposed to the few remaining legacy staff from USDS, one source familiar told Nextgov/FCW, estimating that about 30 such staff remain. The current government employee estimated that only 20 of those from the pre-DOGE organization remain. Prior to the start of the second Trump administration, the organization recently had over 200 employees.

“The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time,” said Musk on Friday, comparing the efforts to Buddhism and calling it a “way of life.”

The temporary organization within USDS is set to sunset July 4 next year, although Musk noted that the president could extend that timeline.

Asked what the biggest obstacle has been for DOGE, Musk said that “it’s mostly just a lot of hard work,” describing going through line items of the government’s spending.

He said that DOGE had been a “boogeyman” blamed for any cuts in government, even if DOGE wasn’t behind them, before pointing to the “banal evil of bureaucracy” as a problem.