Elon Musk’s Efforts to Cut Spending in the Government Were So Incompetent That It’s Shocking, Internal Analysis Finds
For an organization dedicated to "government efficiency," it was really bad at keeping the books. The post Elon Musk’s Efforts to Cut Spending in the Government Were So Incompetent That It’s Shocking, Internal Analysis Finds appeared first on Futurism .
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was tasked with cutting $2 trillion in government "waste and fraud," but it ended up saving only around $215 billion. Internal audits by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that DOGE's claims of savings were riddled with incompetence and potential deception. The agency reportedly terminated 13,476 contracts, but nearly 2,000 of those weren't actually terminated.
Additionally, about $27.4 billion of the purported savings came from contracts that DOGE failed to terminate. The GAO found that over half of DOGE's $61 billion in contract savings couldn't be verified or came from contracts that weren't actually terminated. Similarly, 96 percent of savings claimed from grants couldn't be verified by the accountability office.
The methodology used by DOGE to calculate savings was questionable, as they used the maximum spending limit listed on contracts, which is much higher than the actual spending amounts. Government procurement expert Jessica Tillipman likened this practice to "taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, cancelling it and then saying, 'I've just saved $20,000.'"
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