Tesla CEO Elon Musk: ‘Government is wasting about $100 million per year on…’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently highlighted a cost-cutting measure that suggests that the US federal government may be wasting about $100 million annually on inactive phone lines. Musk quoted a post by DOGE aka the Department of Government Efficiency which revealed that nearly 20% of the phone lines at a federal agency were unused. DOGE shared a post on X that reads “Unused phone lines! Of the 1048 @USOPM phone lines, 198 (19%) were either unused or duplicated.”

It further added: “OPM (Office of Personnel Management) cancelled these lines (took 1 hour), resulting in ~$100k/yr in savings. Since OPM is ~0.1% of the federal government, this suggests that ~$100M/yr is wasted on unused lines”.