Politico Torpedoes Musk’s DOGE ‘Receipts’ — Claims of Massive Waste ‘Dont Match’ Reality

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has claimed to have found and cut so much waste and inefficiency in government that taxpayers should receive refunds as a benefit from his streamlining of federal spending.

But people whose government contracts have been cited by Musk and DOGE online as examples of waste and fraud raised red flags about his claims when speaking to Politico.

Saturday, the outlet looked at some examples of purported waste cited by DOGE with reporter Jessie Blaeser concluding Musk has shared “receipts” but many of them “don’t match” his rhetoric on federal agencies spending like drunken sailors.

For example, a manager at one unnamed company listed as a recipient of a contract cited by DOGE told Blaeser that money DOGE claimed to have found and cut was never even disbursed.

The person said it is widely known that many DOGE claims are questionable.

“We don’t want to speak out, but the numbers are just wrong,” the person said.

Politico’s investigation found other claims of waste by DOGE are questionable. In one example, DOGE reported the same $25 million Agriculture Department contract four times – leading some to errantly believe $100 million in waste had been identified.

In reality, less than $1 million on a claimed $100 million in contracts was paid. Blaeser reported:

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. The manager, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly without fear of retribution, said that their company had applied for a portion of the contract listed, but was never awarded the money.

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Among those errors are myriad duplicated contracts, beyond the ones DOGE has already removed. POLITICO identified at least 14 instances where items are repeated, totaling $325 million in claimed savings.

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, according to records on USA Spending.

One of Politico’s sources said, “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.”

The person concluded, “But we don’t want to speak up because we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”