Elon Musk's cost-cutting team posted a "wall of receipts" online this week, purportedly showing how much the Department of Government Efficiency has saved taxpayers. Reducing the federal workforce and canceling leases and contracts has cut $55 billion in spending, the group says, though you can't tell from what is billed as "a transparent account of DOGE's findings and actions," the New York Times reports. The list includes contracts that were counted two or three times, outdated data, cancelations that took place under the Biden administration, and generally careless accounting—including, in one instance a "billion" on an item that should be "million." A former USAID official pointed out that bad assumptions underlie the information. "It's not real money," said Kelly Saldana. "Nobody ever does that math."
An analysis by the Washington Post found that many of the contracts had already been paid out; it's too late to realize any savings there. The DOGE list includes 417 deals that it says saved $0. The total number of contracts listed is 1,125, said to have saved $7.2 billion, which DOGE says is one-fifth of the overall total. For about 50 contracts called indefinite delivery vehicles, the full amount of spending possible was counted, though that much frequently isn't spent. Those contracts accounted for more than $1 billion of the savings DOGE reported. Changes were made to the site during the week, removing about $9 billion from the reported savings.
Citations on small contracts are problematic, too. An environmental scientist's contract to study invasive species in the St. Lawrence Seaway made the list but shouldn't have. "That contract wasn't canceled by DOGE or anyone else," David Reid told the Times. He decided to let the contract expire on Dec. 31 and retire instead. "If they took credit for canceling the contract, they're lying," he said. DOGE reported that the cancelation saved taxpayers $25,000.
- The New York Times' report on the savings claims can be found here, and the Washington Post's is here.
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