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A conservative watchdog says Trump’s much-hyped DOGE cuts are a drop in the bucket compared to America’s ballooning entitlement spending.
OpenTheBooks, a conservative fiscal watchdog group, released a report on Thursday showing that mandatory spending for Medicare and Social Security vastly outweigh any cuts to discretionary spending ushered in by the Trump administration.
The report was released as lawmakers clash over government funding, with the fight centered on Democratic plans to expand Obamacare.
“Government shutdowns offer taxpayers a much-needed reality check on the massive scale of federal spending and our unsustainable debt and deficits,” OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Policymakers need to wake up and take a much closer look at safety net spending, which is the largest share of our budget and is highly susceptible to fraud.”
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Congress is currently in the midst of negotiating an appropriations spending package that would reopen the government after Republicans and Democrats failed to come to a consensus earlier this week. (Getty Images)
Of the $6.9 trillion spent by the federal government in 2024, $912 billion went to Medicare and $1.5 trillion went to Social Security, according to OpenTheBooks.
Meanwhile, OpenTheBooks highlights, the rescission package passed by Congress in July, which largely focused on cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, saved around $9 billion and DOGE cuts saved taxpayers around $150 billion.
“The amounts of disputed savings in 2025 pale in comparison to our spending on safety net programs,” the OpenTheBooks report states. “If the flow of money in the federal government could be viewed from a jet cruising at 30,000 feet, Medicare would the Mississippi River and Social Security would be the Columbia River while USAID and ‘woke’ spending programs would be barely visible, tiny streams.”
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A protest co-led by the California Nurses Association called on Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., to vote against President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” spending bill that would cut spending on healthcare and other federal safety net programs. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
In particular, OpenTheBooks zeroed in on just one aspect of Medicare funds — those that are allocated for prescription drug coverage. The fiscal watchdog found that the top 1,000 providers in the system are linked to more spending in 2024 — $10.9 billion — than was saved by the July rescission package. According to OpenTheBooks’ findings, the top ten providers are associated with nearly the same amount of savings ushered in by the Trump administration’s $1.1 billion in cuts to PBS and NPR.
“We are not implying that any of these providers are engaging in anything other than lawful conduct on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries,” the report asserts. “Yet, it is also true that healthcare spending in the United States is grossly inefficient and fraudulent at a large scale. In June, the Department of Justice charged 324 defendants for defrauding Medicare of $14.6 billion. Meanwhile, last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that insurers ‘pocketed $50 billion from Medicare for diseases no doctor treated.’”
Kennedy and the Trump administration have taken multiple steps since Donald Trump took back the Oval Office aimed at reducing drug prescription costs for Americans. (iStock/Getty )
OpenTheBooks’ report argues that if American taxpayers want to understand the costs, benefits, vulnerabilities and potential savings, related to federal government spending, then they must fight for transparency.
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“When taxpayers see where their money is flowing, especially in times of heated debates and shutdowns, they can hold policymakers accountable to better direct its flow,” the report concludes.
