DOGE Has a Math Problem

from The New York Times I'm Rachel. Abrams this is the. [Music]. daily. today since the moment president Trump. took office Elon Musk and Doge have. wielded an unprecedented level of power. to help the new Administration slash the. US government and so far they've claimed. to have cut tens of billions of dollars. in wasteful spending.

today my colleague David fenold explains. why those claims are not what they seem. and what that tells us about musk's. project to shrink the federal. bureaucracy it's Tuesday March. [Music]. 4th David we've been hearing a lot about. what Doge the Elon Musk group tasked. with saving $2 trillion has been up to.

in recent weeks they've done massive. layoffs they've done job Purity tests. and they actually have made billions of. dollars in Cuts but you've been looking. into exactly what they say they've done. which is kind of like an audit if you. will of Doge and I'd love it if you. could explain how you went about doing. that well so I should start by saying. that it's really hard to know most of. what doge is doing doge is really opaque. uh it's operating in a lot of different. places at once operating almost in total. secrecy.

so we've been looking for a window any. sort of window to see the kind of. analysis they're using to justify all. the things they're cutting and the. things they want to cut and a couple of. weeks ago they actually gave us one. window into their work they set up a. website basically it's a kind of a. primitiv looking website it looks a. little bit like something off the dark. web uh that's the vibe you know I looked. at it and it actually the look of the. website sort of looks like this HTML. meets crypto trading platform meets. Twitter.

it does it looks like something where. you're about to trade some kind of coin. named after a cat or something but the. sort of main feature of it if you scroll. down a little bit it's what they call. the wall of receipts it is about. 2,200 different Federal contracts and. list details about what agency held the. contract what vendor held the contract. and how much was saved by canceling it. there's also sort of an effort to gamify. it there's a leaderboard of the agencies. that have cut the most and agencies that. have cut the least and at the top of the.

page highlighted in yellow is sort of. the main dollar figure the Topline. number it says that overall Doge has. saved as a Friday morning $65 billion. and 65 billion just to point out that is. not chump change no it's a lot of money. it's about 1% of the overall federal. budget but it's a pretty small fraction. of the $2 trillion doll that musk said. during the campaign that Doge could save. but what's valuable for us is not just. the Topline number more valuable is this. wall of receipts because that's the only.

part of Doge's cuts that it has itemized. that it's backed up that it's sort of. explained how it got to those numbers. and that's the one place where you can. see stepbystep Doge showing its work so. how did you actually start to analyze. all of this and start sifting through. all those. receipts well I work with the times. upshot desk a team of incredibly good. data analysts and reporters we. downloaded all the contracts that were. on that wall of receipts and started. looking through them and the first thing. you realize really quickly is that there. are not 6 5 billion worth of cuts on.

this wall of receipts the original list. which was posted uh in the middle of. February had about 16 billion dollars. worth of receipts so this public. accounting of what they did only. accounts for a small portion of this. much bigger number they're claiming so. then we start to look at the individual. line items the individual contracts they. saying they canceled and you notice one. thing which is that many of them even by. doa's own accounting accounted for zero. savings the original list had about. thousand entries more than 400 of them.

they said the contracts hadn't actually. saved taxpayers a dollar wait so these. line items were just like zero it would. actually say that we made this cut and. there's nothing interesting yeah and. again that was on a small percentage it. was almost half of the original. contracts so once you move on from the. surprising fact that so many of these. contracts have zero savings you start to. notice some really sloppy accounting. some really sloppy mistakes and in many. cases those mistakes make the savings. seem much much much bigger on the wall.

of receipts than it was in reality like. what right off the bat number one the. first biggest contract listed on the. wall of savings when they first put it. out was something that had an obvious. problem in it so they had claimed that. the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. which is a part of the Department of. Homeland Security had cut an $8 billion. contract and what's curious about that. cut right off the bat it tells you that. maybe there's something wrong there is. that the entire budget of ice. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is. about eight billion okay so cutting.

eight billion would have been like. shuttering that agency basically yeah. it's unplausible that one contract with. one vendor would account for their. entire budget and also implausible that. if that contract did exist that you. would cut it because it would mean their. entire budget would be gone so what. happened there why was that listed as 8. billion what my colleagues at the upshot. figured out was that it actually was 8. million which is again a lot of money. but it's one 1,000th of what they had. claimed and it was just a typo in the. system somebody in the federal. Contracting tracking system had listed.

this at 8 billion at some point and. really the number was 8 million so doa's. response to that was well yeah this was. a typo and you know we knew all along it. was a typo but they put eight billion on. this wall of receipts that was about. half of the initial total savings they. were claiming in the wall of receipts. and again if if you knew anything about. ice or the federal budget that's a. mistake you wouldn't make right somebody. who actually had experience with this. agency or maybe with these kinds of.

contracts would have been like hey wait. a second that does not make any sense. right and that was the start of a. pattern just going on the list of the. largest contracts they were claiming. credit for cancelling we found other. sloppy mistakes that often seem to. indicate a real lack of. familiarity with the Government. Contracting system with how Government. Contracting Works basically they had. taken on this job to be experts in. federal Contracting and they didn't seem. to have learned the basics about how it. worked can you give me an example of. that well for the next example of a kind.

of mistake we found all we have to do is. go from number one to number two on the. list it turns out that number two on the. list was $655 Million contract was an. example of another kind of error we saw. throughout the list of receipts which. was it was the same contract in number. two number three and number four counted. three different times how would that. even happen well I'll take you through. it each one of those two three and four. were all US agency for International. Development usaid contracts with vendors. who did basically quality control they.

would go around and make sure that. usaid's work in Africa and other places. with achieving the goals that they. wanted and they all shared the same. contract but then when the Doge people. looked at it they thought that every one. of them had a separate contract and then. every one of them was entitled to the. whole money set aside for that effort so. when three of those vendors had their. contracts canceled they counted that as. three different cancellations East worth. $655 million so that sounds very extreme. did anything else stand out to you as.

you were going through this accounting. yeah there there was another kind of. mistake we found all over the wall of. receipts which was that Doge was. claiming credit for quote unquote. cancelling contracts that had actually. been cancelled before President Trump. took. office the biggest dollar amount for one. of those is a $ 1.9 billion do cut that. the Department of Treasury made and you. can actually see this happening you can. see how it gets on the wall of receipts. which is that treasury which oversees. IRS tweets at Doge and says hey Doge. look at this incredible contract we.

canel a $ 1.9 billion IT contract Doge. says hey that's fantastic they you know. retweet it post like a screenshot from. the federal procurement data system that. shows a terminated contract and then put. that savings $ 1.9 billion onto the wall. of receipts the problem is that when you. call the vendor that was listed as. having its contract canceled that. contract was canceled under President. Joe Biden it was canceled last fall for. reasons that had nothing to do with Doge.

oh and that's not the only example of. that one of the bigger contracts for. more than $50 million in savings is an. Department of Homeland Security contract. that Doge says was canceled it was an IT. contract that the Coast Guard had. entered into but all you got to do is. click on the link to see the page from. the federal procurement system and. you'll see that contract ended in. 2005 it almost sounds like these. agencies are intentionally deceiving. these guys from Doge because as you. described they're saying hey look over. here look at this cut we made but. actually that cut was made years prior.

and you would think that whoever's. flagging that to Doge would have known. that from inside of the treasury or. wherever else so is this a deliberate. attempt at Deception or what did you. make of this well what we know is that. the cuts that are on the wall are. suggested by the agencies the agencies. send them to Doge and then Doge posts. them on the wall I can't get into the. head of the people at the agencies to. know if this is their incompetence or if. they are trying to maybe avoid having to.

make real cuts by you know sort of. plating Doge with some bogus cuts that. don't cost them anything what we can. tell though from looking at this is. something about doa's own quality. control and interest in quality control. the amount of effort it takes to figure. out that some of these claims are wrong. is not huge like you don't need a. master's degree in Government. Contracting all you'd have to do is. click on the link and realize oh wait. this contract expired in June 2005 and. if they're missing that kind of mistake. it doesn't really seem like any is. looking at these things they're just.

sort of posting them on the wall and. claiming credit for them so at the end. of the day how much total savings does. it actually seem like they made out of. all these Cuts they claimed on the. website so I have not been through every. single cut on the list we're still. working through them but after we did. some initial reporting those deleted. what had been the top five items on. their original wall of receipts they got. rid of all of them and the savings they. had claimed from that which had been.

over $1 billion declined to a few. million that doesn't give me a huge. amount of confidence for the accuracy of. the rest of the data that we haven't. gone through yet so okay that is. obviously a huge discrepancy between. what they claimed and what you actually. were able to verify which again just. sort of speaks to the idea that this. isn't a super well-oiled. operation can you just tell us a little. bit about the people who are actually in. charge of making an accounting for these. Cuts within.

Doge the times had a great story about. the people who work for Doge we. identified more than 40 people who are. working either at the central Doge. office which is within the white house. or out in agencies sort of under the. control of Doge and they're by and large. not people who have experience in. government they're coders they're. software Engineers there're sort of. people who are close to Elon Musk and go. from company to company and to the. degree that they have experience. managing large organizations it's. something like Twitter or Tesla or.

SpaceX very different organizations in. as big as they are much smaller. organizations than the one they're in. charge of now so David you have laid out. how Doge has intentionally or not. exaggerated its Effectiveness and in. cutting government spending so far. either because of mistakes or because of. the types of contracts they're targeting. but my impression overall is that Elon. Musk and Doge are respons ible in large. part for eliminating entire agencies.

like usaid for example making massive. cuts to the Environmental Protection. Agency encouraging all these workers to. take a buyout it's felt like a real. bloodletting within the federal. government within the federal Workforce. and that would obviously account for. savings across the government so I guess. what I'm saying is that I understand the. importance in holding this exercise that. doge is doing to account and doing this. audit but it kind of feels like when.

entire agencies are going away and being. gutted a little small potatoes to point. out like some of the accounting errors. on this. list well look in the grand scheme of. the federal government's budget and in. the cuts that doge is proposing to make. these mistakes are relatively small but. there's something bigger at stake here. doge is of course a team of people. within the White House but it's also an. idea a bigger idea about the shape of.

government and it's an idea about how to. cut government that's why this look is. so important because this is our one. chance the one window we have to see the. world as Doge sees it to see what they. know what they don't know to see what. they understand and what they don't. understand and looking closely at that I. think gives us a lot of clues about what. actually motivates Doge what actually. motivates the cuts they're making and. some sense of where their effort is.

going to go from. [Music]. here we'll be right. [Music]. back so David besides all of the. mistakes that you uncovered when you. step back and you look at this wall of. receipts what is the bigger picture here. like what does all of this tell us about. the larger project that is Doge the most.

important lesson I think we can learn. from the mistakes we're seeing here is. that we should throw out the idea that. doge is somehow able to process this. huge amount of government data and find. insights that no other people have had. what Doge has been sold to us as is like. it's tech support that's what Elon Musk. calls it you know these are like The. Geek Squad for the government we're. going to bring them in and they're going. to find examples of waste and in. efficiency that other people hadn't.

that's not only what we're seeing here. you know we're starting to see patterns. and the choices they're making so far it. seems like they're focused Less on the. really big Federal contractors the. defense contractors the health. contractors that make up the huge. portion of federal spending instead. they're going after larger numbers of. smaller contracts with smaller firms. often owned by women or. minorities often when the cuts are real. and there are many cuts that are real on. this list they're motivated by ideology.

they're political decisions they're. cutting. USA not because they've found some great. fraud or waste or ineffectiveness at. usaid doing the mission it was supposed. to do they just don't like usid think. they think that mission foreign aid is. not worthy of taxpayer money that's a. political view some people have people. in the government have but to say that. it is some sort of analysis That's goes. beyond or above politics there doesn't. seem to be a lot of evidence of that.

kind of analysis in the data we've seen. so then this is a view also into the. ideology of Doge or maybe the Trump. Administration but it also appears to be. a show of force actually a shuttering an. entire agency seemingly overnight sends. quite a strong message about how power. will be wielded in this Administration. that's right they've sent a lot of. messages to that end that if you. disagree with them you could be a Target. you could have your funding you could. have your job taken away it's a very.

aggressive view of the way that a. president imprints his ideology his. political goals on the government but. also on Society at large and I think. that's the real impetus behind what doge. is doing despite its name efficiency. despite Elon musk's characterization of. it as sort of the government's geak. Squad it's a political project a very. aggressive political project to carry. out a political ideology ology not some.

sort of analysis that's outside of. politics but if this is about. telegraphing and using Doge as this kind. of instrument of political pressure as. you're describing and cultural change I. just sort of wonder how you reconcile. that with what you told us earlier where. these agencies are kind of duping Doge. and doing just enough to appease them. basically but not really taking. seriously this mandate to cancel a bunch. of government contracts or other types. of work like does that reveal that Doge. in some way is not going to necessarily.

be all that. effective I think we're in the middle of. a period that will settle that question. I do not think that's a settled question. if agencies send bogus cuts to Doge will. Doge accept them and does that allow. them to avoid real Cuts it's part of the. same open question as that email that. Elon Musk sent out to all federal. workers asking you know what were the. five things you did last week the first. time we tried it about a million.

government workers responded but also a. lot of them didn't and a lot of agencies. told their people don't respond that was. the first time that Elon Musk had tried. to do something with his very large. power within the government and it. failed and so this is a power struggle I. don't think we're seeing it in public in. public everybody's getting along what. you're seeing there when Doge fails to. catch a bogus cut that an agency sends. it you're seeing that kind of battle. going out right at the trench level. between who will shape the future of.

these agencies the people who run them. or Elon Musk and I don't think I see. Elon Musk giving up anytime soon and the. fear of course is that if Elon Musk does. not give up he and Doge are basically. going to take a wrecking ball to the. federal government I mean they already. kind of have right we've already seen. these massive Cuts but as they continue. they might end up cutting unnecessary. waste but may also cut things that. really create pain for not just. employees but the general public because. as you explained. Doge doesn't really seem to know the ins.

and outs of government and they're. already making all of these kind of very. simple mistakes and who knows if they. can actually fix things that they broke. but just to play Devil's Advocate no one. gave Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt. when he bought Twitter and basically. slashed his way through it everybody. said he doesn't know what he's doing. he's cutting too much he's not leaving. enough people behind to leave this thing. operational and obviously lo and behold. Twitter is still up and running so I. just wonder if there's some bigger.

lesson to take from that I think there's. two things to keep in mind one is what. we mean when we talk about Twitter. surviving yes Twitter exists there's. still people you know posting posts. there and reading it it's not the same. thing that it was the audience has. changed the content has changed the the. experience of being on Twitter has. changed and you I think some people left. because of that so musk sees that as a. success and it seems like he is trying. to apply that like slash it cut. everything and then see what breaks and. then rebuild the things that broke that.

approach to federal government the thing. that stops me and when I think about. whether that approach can really be. carried forward with the federal. government is it's so different from. Donald Trump's view of the federal. government he's not a cutter he didn't. run on cut in the federal government he. didn't govern this way the first time. his vision of government was one that. basically continued to give people the. benefits that they wanted Medicare. Social Security he doesn't ask people. and in his campaign to make sacrifices. he was saying you know I'm going to. fight inflation I'm going to fight.

illegal immigration but for everything. else things are not going to change that. much we're not going to touch these big. expenditures we're not going to touch. the defense department Donald Trump. didn't say hey I'm gonna run for. president I'm gonna slash the government. back so deeply that you know it'll just. be barely alive that's musk's vision and. if it continues and it changes the. experience for the worse of average. folks Trump is going to be faced with. the question of do I stop my most. powerful Ally or do I defend my own. vision of what government ought to be.

and the vision that voters sort of. elected me to carry out right because. like as you're pointing out voters. didn't necessarily want some of these. cuts to affect them in the ways that. potentially they could because Elon Musk. is getting access to all kinds of. payment information data information and. nobody really knows what's going to be. affected by that that's the fundamental. difference here right you can delete. your Twitter account you could stop. reading Twitter and life goes on but now. if you apply that same sort of like cut. first measur later approach to.

government then you're talking about. people don't get their Medicare people. don't you know the IRS doesn't answer. your phone call when you have a question. about your taxes the park that you're. going to visit doesn't open I don't. think that the public and Trump's voters. were prepared for this kind of change. and to make it risks huge political. Flowback for Trump and pretty big. disruptions for regular people right. because even for Trump voters who might. have wanted smaller government more. transparency what the government spends. its money on there's definitely a.

tension it would seem between those. priorities and what we're seeing with. Doge which is only a tiny fraction of. what they claim they're up to which. makes you just sort of wonder what else. is going on that we really don't have a. window into right now look this to me. this is a question about trust an. enormous amount historic amount of trust. has been placed in Doge this tiny little. group of people many of them with no. government experience has been given an. unprecedented amount of data about.

government unprecedented amount of data. about us about Americans and an. unprecedent amount of power to change. the way the government's going to look. for years for. decades and the question is do they. deserve that. trust and the one way we have to start. to answer that question is to look at. this little slice of data that they've. made available about how they see the. world about the work that they're. doing and so sloppy mistakes obvious. mistakes in the first thing they show to.

the public raises questions about. whether they deserve the huge amount of. trust they've been. given David thank you so much thank you. so much for having me. [Music]. on on Monday morning Doge deleted. hundreds of additional mistakes found on. its website erasing $4 billion in. savings that the group claimed to have. found in government. [Music].

spending it was the second time in a. week that some of the biggest alleged. savings were. [Music]. removed we'll be right. back here's what else you need to know. today on Monday president Trump said. that sweeping tariffs on Canada and. Mexico would go into effect on Tuesday. shattering hope that the administration.

would make a last minute deal to avoid a. trade War the president is adding a 25%. fee on all Mexican and Canadian exports. as well as an additional 10% on Chinese. Goods saying that these countries have. not done enough to stem the flow of. drugs and migrants into the United. States the tariffs are widely expected. to disrupt Regional Supply chains and. raise prices for consumers and in. response to the news the S&P 500 fell 1. .8% the biggest drop so far this.

year and the Trump Administration says. it's suspending all military aid to. Ukraine and will not resume the shipment. of arms and ammunition until Ukraine. satisfies president Trump's demand to. commit to peace talks with Russia the. move follows a heated exchange on Friday. between Trump and Ukraine's president. vlodimir zalinski in the Oval. [Music]. Office today's episode was produced by. Anna Foley and Olivia Nat with help from.

Mary Wilson and Carlos PR it was edited. by MJ Davis Lynn with help from Patricia. willins contains original music by Pat. mccusker and Rowan nisto and was. engineered by Alyssa Moxley our theme. music is by Jim brunberg and Ben. lansburg of. [Music]. wonderly that's it for the daily I'm. Rachel Abrams see you tomorrow.

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