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Even if DOGE was acting in good faith (it wasn't), saving money for any organisation is really hard.
It's obvious hubris to assume that everyone who has been managing something before you is an idiot and that you have some special ability to solve problems (which you don't understand) more cost effectively.
Regardless, in government you can easily "down size" by firing everyone and hiring consultants which are way more expensive. Usually it's politicians wives who own the shares in the companies providing the consultants.
Sadly, while you can cancel Tariffs, take Trump's name off things, and even demolish the Epstein Ballroom, the damage that DOGE did probably can't be reversed in any sensible timeframe.
The type of hubris that creates these situations seems far from obvious to the average person. Voters, over and over, want an outsider because the experienced and knowledgeable people are viewed as idiots. The wave of states enacting term limits in the 90s died down as data came out showing they were unhelpful at best and in some circumstances harmful to the legislative process, but legislative term limits still poll as hugely popular with American voters.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
It's something inherent to human psychology. My hope for mitigating it with elections is ranked choice voting. Not the part at the polling station specifically, but the way it changes the incentives for campaign strategies I believe promotes more thoughtful and less fear- and hate- driven messaging. If we aren't constantly being bombarded with ads about how awful our politicians are, I think we would be less eager to jump on the anti-intellectual bandwagons.