Politico: DOGE’s “Receipts” Are Just Fakery And Errors

Politico reports:

Elon Musk promised to deliver a “maximally transparent” government efficiency program. What he’s disclosed so far is a messy and inaccurate accounting of his group’s early work. The first comprehensive public listing of the billions of dollars in purported savings Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is making across federal contracts is filled with errors, according to a POLITICO review of the published data.

In one example, DOGE repeated a single $25 million item under the Agriculture Department four times, reporting each vendor that was eligible to bid on the work and quadrupling purported savings to a total of $100 million. In reality, there are only two finalized contracts from the vendors listed that have been awarded less than $1 million. Beyond duplicate contracts, there are hundreds of instances where DOGE reports $0 in savings .

CBS News reports:

DOGE’s accounting errors involving indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, known in government-speak as IDIQ, occurred because the team likely misunderstood how government contracting works, experts told CBS News. These contracts are designed to set a ceiling for the funding of a larger project.

Multiple contractors bid on tasks within that IDIQ. The ceiling for the project identified by DOGE was $655 million. But DOGE claimed savings of $654,990,000 three times.

In actuality, the government spent less on the contract — around $400 million over the course of the past four years for 44 different sub-contracts — and the IDIQ is likely to have only minimal additional spending.

There’s MUCH more fakery listed at the first link.

#MAGA like many of @realDonaldTrump‘s promises, please don’t believe any facts that they share until you see the sources for them. There is more deceit now than ever.

DOGE shared its receipts — and some of them don’t match https://t.co/Ktp3P3dawT via @politico

— Brian Allman (@BrianAllman) February 22, 2025