Round 40% of DOGE’s Cancelled Contracts Is Cash That is Already Been Spent

The Division of Authorities Effectivity’s “Wall of Receipts” is a litany of failure. In keeping with reporting from the Related Press, a full 40% of the federal contracts gained’t save America any cash in any respect. The AP’s report got here the identical day the Authorities Accountability Workplace, a 103-year-old establishment, published its own report on the locations Washington may trim the funds and get monetary savings.

GAO is an outdated workplace that is aware of how Washington works, is aware of its gamers, and takes the time to make cautious and well-researched suggestions about save the U.S. taxpayer cash. DOGE is only some months outdated and extra all in favour of memes and social-media frenzy than precise spending cuts.

The proof is within the outcomes.

Elon Musk made an enormous deal of DOGE being accountable to “the folks” and that there could be loads of receipts that present simply how good his extra-governmental cost-saving enterprise is. He’s revealed an unlimited record of 1,125 contracts that DOGE has terminated. In most of the instances listed, the cash is already spent and there’s no getting it again. It’s not a lot a listing of financial savings as an organized record of locations the federal government is spending cash, or has spent cash, in methods Musk doesn’t like.

In keeping with the AP, 417 of the federal government contracts gained’t save anybody any cash. Musk and his DOGE cronies apparently don’t know learn a authorities contract. There’s a lot of that going around. It’s additionally attainable that they’re merely mendacity.

The Wall of Receipts is an extended and ever-updating record that accommodates easy descriptions of what was canceled, the full worth of the contract, and the quantity the federal government saves by canceling it. It even accommodates a hyperlink to the contract’s web page within the Federal Procurement Data System, an internet database of presidency contracts.

Loads of the stuff on DOGE’s record is subscriptions to information providers like Bloomberg and Politico which have already been paid, generally years in the past. There’s additionally coaching for software licenses which have already been bought and training that’s already been accomplished. In 2024, USAID paid Winzip $20,472.38 for software program licenses. Additionally in 2024, the Division of Agriculture spent $23,520 for a Politico subscription. In each instances, the cash is already spent. But each are on the DOGE record.

One of many issues that’s so irritating about DOGE and Musk’s strategy is that waste, fraud, and abuse within the U.S. authorities is an actual drawback. One other contract on DOGE’s reducing board is a USAID media undertaking that spent $227,392 to make YouTube movies about massive cats and conservation points round them. That looks like some huge cash to supply YouTube movies about cats.

The Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO) is a analysis group that works for Congress. Yearly it publishes a “Excessive-Threat” record of locations within the federal funds which might be vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. This 12 months’s report is 303-pages-long. It highlights 38 areas that D.C. ought to probe if it desires actual financial savings.

The GAO has a confirmed monitor file. “Over time, progress on our Checklist has led to about $759 billion in financial savings—however there’s nonetheless extra on the desk,” the GAO mentioned in its report. By its personal reckoning, the GAO has helped save U.S. taxpayers $84 billion during the last two years.

So what does the GAO see as the massive spending issues? The elevated variety of disasters because of local weather change, again taxes as a result of IRS, mismanaged real-estate holdings, fee fraud, and out-of-control spending on the Pentagon.

Of those points, the Pentagon is on the high of the record. It’s the trillion-dollar monster that spends more cash than most different authorities companies mixed. DOGE and Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth promise that cuts are coming, however the proposed $50 billion is a drop within the bucket of the just about trillion greenback spend it makes yearly. And loads of the DoD’s costliest packages are on an exemption list, together with a $1.7 trillion improve of America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The opposite points in all probability gained’t enhance beneath Trump. The administration has reduce staff from the Federal Emergency Administration Company (EMA) and the IRS. That’s going to make it tougher to handle the disasters that come from local weather change and acquire taxes owed to the federal government.

One other essential instrument to struggle authorities waste, fraud, and abuse is the workplaces of the Inspectors Basic. These unbiased companies inside the authorities lead complicated investigations into the assorted branches of presidency and continuously flip up waste, fraud, and abuse.

Trump fired 17 of them.

DOGE, Trump, and Musk’s cuts to federal spending are performative. There’s no plan right here and no actual purpose. The U.S. federal authorities spends an excessive amount of cash, it’s true, however Trump and Musk are firing all of the individuals who know the place the our bodies are buried. They may undergo lengthy and sophisticated reviews and work with congress to slash actual spending to loads of costly and pointless authorities packages.

As an alternative, they’re doing what appears good on-line. They’re posting an enormous record on a dumb web site named after a meme-dog. An inventory that features their myriad failures.