The OMB has been trying to slowly and thoughtfully cut spending since the 70's, and they've struggled to see success. I think in terms of cutting spending, the slower it happens the less likely anything productive will come from it. It's why companies tend to cut whole departments at once, and the government desperately needs a way to cut funding from things that aren't working to reallocate it where the money is needed.
From what I've seen the DOGE cuts have been incredibly efficient in isolating poorly spent (or corrupt) money. Lots of corrupt foreign programs or government donations into partisan political groups. Most of the time when someone says they shouldn't have cut money, they're talking about an NGO or some research that benefits their particular partisanship at the cost of fairness or scientific rigor; which is exactly what we shouldn't be funding.
The Clinton admin was successful in the 90s. They cut costs enough to pull the US entirely out of the deficit. They did things slowly and methodically over 5 years, making sure the things they cut were unnecessary before cutting them. They also followed the law, avoiding the legal issues and consequential costs that DOGE is incurring.
Federal spending is up during this administration, the deficit is at modern-day averages, and the bills recently passed by this administration are going to increase it even further. The slash-and-burn style of cuts that DOGE is sloppy and ineffective. They are Chesterton's fencing themselves -- cutting things that they later find to be important. And on the other hand, not spending the time to actually seek out waste that is hard to find. A tech company works very differently than the government does, and they are slowly starting to discover that the hard way.
From what I've seen the DOGE cuts have been incredibly efficient in isolating poorly spent (or corrupt) money. Lots of corrupt foreign programs or government donations into partisan political groups. Most of the time when someone says they shouldn't have cut money, they're talking about an NGO or some research that benefits their particular partisanship at the cost of fairness or scientific rigor; which is exactly what we shouldn't be funding.