The daily drumbeat of success stories from Elon Musk's controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are not holding up to the light of day, with Politico reporting it has found a wealth of mistakes and outright false claims according to a deep dive into the numbers.
On Saturday morning, Politico's Jessie Blaeser labeled what has been reviewed so far as "messy and inaccurate" before adding the public listing of savings from DOGE "is filled with errors."
Summarizing their findings Politico is reporting, among other problematic claims, "Instances where a single pot of money is listed multiple times — tripling or quadrupling the amount of savings claimed," "Contracts that had not yet been awarded," and "Contract savings identified by DOGE that do not match with records they refer to in the Federal Procurement Data System."
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Despite corrections from DOGE when confronted with errors, the report notes, "The inconsistencies represent a fundamental misunderstanding of federal contract data, according to a manager at one of the recipient companies listed on the DOGE site" who stated there was a savings claim made for money that was never awarded.
According to that government contractor who did not want their name used out of fear of reprisals, "Everyone in the consulting industry has been well aware of the questionable contracts issued and outright errors in the data, and everyone is very well-aware they’re repeating the wrong numbers. But we don’t want to speak up because we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
The Politico report detailed discovering, "at least 14 instances where items are repeated, totaling $325 million in claimed savings."
In another instance, the savings was linked to the wrong company with Politico's Blaeser reporting, "DOGE reported a canceled contract with National Jewish Health to support research on lung diseases. But it’s linked to a contract with the University of Oklahoma for cardiovascular research. It’s unclear which contract DOGE has canceled."
You can read more here.