Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save any money.

The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.

That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.

That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.

“It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1252·
    18 hours ago

    Cool story, bro 👍

    Too bad it’s irrelevant because saving money was never anything but a red herring in the first place. The purpose of DOGE is to purge the Federal government of relatively-impartial career bureaucratic and install MAGA loyalist stooges in their place. “Efficiency” has fuck-all to do with it, except in the sense of efficiently inflicting their extremist agenda on us all.

    Wake me up when the AP quits naively pretending Musk is acting in good faith and starts doing its damn job.

    • Spaceballstheusername@lemmy.world
      4·
      7 hours ago

      It’s also to perpetuate a lie that they saved so much money they can give the 1% huge tax cuts. Then when the bill comes due they’ll have to cut Medicaid and ss.

    • jballsEnglish
      10·
      14 hours ago

      Just goes to show how effective it is to repeat a lie so much that people start to accept it as fact. By continually calling DOGE a “cost-cutting” effort, they’ve completely framed the conversation how they want.

    • Doug Holland@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      16 hours ago

      I came here to say what you said, but you said it better. I’ll just add…

      Wake me up when the AP quits naively pretending Musk is acting in good faith and starts doing its damn job.

      You’re going to be sleeping a long time.