Summary
Elon Musk claims to have saved taxpayers $105 billion, but its own figures add up to just $19 billion.
A New York Times report found DOGE falsely credited itself for long-canceled contracts, including a 2005 Coast Guard contract.
DOGE’s inexperienced staff, many tied to Musk’s companies, may be unqualified to understand complex government programs. Mistakes could be deadly, with one former USAID staffer warning tens of thousands of lives may be lost.
The Times alleged DOGE has been removing erroneous “savings” from its wall of receipts just to replace the mess-ups with new errors.
Even if it adds up to 19 billion, it will never be that number. There are costs to terminating a contract, usually requiring compensation for all materials bought or produced, as well as overhead costs related to the contract. There is a reason that contracts exist and it’s to disincentivize the dissolution of an agreement… Termination for convenience is not cheap.
That’s not even getting into lawsuits related to direct employee terminations.
And at the end, this is for what? What benefit do we get from tearing up contracts that are half completed and half paid for? What benefit is there in laying off people that wanted to serve and in many cases took a pay cut to do it, knowing that the trafeoff is stability of their employer and the knowledge that they are helping the country.
This shit will haunt us after I die. Trust has been shattered. Good luck calculating the cost of that.