Posted on 12/26/2025 7:11:03 AM PST by dennisw
Elon Musk's much heralded chainsaw couldn't make the cut.
Despite the Trump administration's efforts to slash government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, federal expenditures actually increased in fiscal year 2025.
A new investigative report from the New York Times released this week showcased that many of the contracts cut by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by tech billionaire Musk for the start of Trump's term, were already winding down, or were not on track to reach their maximum spending allotment.
The findings were stark: Of the top 13 contract cancellations in DOGE's database all 13 were incorrectly characterized, according to the Times. Among the top 40 listed cancellations, 28 were deemed inaccurate.
Of the top 40 contracts and grants that were listed as cancelled, 28 were deemed incorrect by the analysis.
One $500 million contract from the Department of Energy was counted as cancelled twice.
Other cancellations were already in the works during the final weeks of the Biden administration, and others still simply expired but were still counted by DOGE as a win.
Perhaps most telling: 80 percent of the cancellations touted on DOGE's public dashboard claimed savings of $1 million or less—a rounding error in the federal budget.
The bottom line? Overall government spending rose from roughly $6.95 trillion in fiscal 2024 to approximately $7.01 trillion in fiscal 2025, despite DOGE canceling more contracts than were cut during the final year of the Biden administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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This is the NY Time report https://archive.ph/Aqboq that the UK Daily Mail got its information from.
Sample >>>
At the top were two Defense Department contracts, one for information technology, one for aircraft maintenance. Mr. Musk’s group listed them as “terminations,” and said their demise had saved taxpayers $7.9 billion. That was not true. The contracts are still alive and well, and those savings were an accounting mirage.
Together, those two false entries were bigger than 25,000 of DOGE’s other claims combined.
DOGE was a ploy to Kill USAID which was bankrolling election fraud.
“Perhaps most telling: 80 percent of the cancellations touted on DOGE’s public dashboard claimed savings of $1 million or less—a rounding error in the federal budget.”
If a million dollar mistake in the Federal budget is just a rounding error maybe that’s part of the problem.
The deep state lies again.
At the top were two Defense Department contracts, one for information technology, one for aircraft maintenance. Mr. Musk’s group listed them as “terminations,” and said their demise had saved taxpayers $7.9 billion. That was not true. The contracts are still alive and well, and those savings were an accounting mirage.
Together, those two false entries were bigger than 25,000 of DOGE’s other claims combined.
There were 25,000 OTHER “claims?”
We need to cut spending or perish, that is, perish as GB has, a slow miserable financial death, that Daily Mail fails to understand, or doesn’t want to understand due to jealousy or their limited ability to understand due to censorship.
UK Daily Mail was bought by Jeff Zucker’s group a couple of years ago. He’s trying to make them into CNN-UK.
Looking more closely: Interest payments increased $100 billion between 24 to 25. That means mandatory and discretionary spending dropped slightly, and at least going in the right direction.
Squeezing out the massive mandatory and discretionary fraud will take more time.
“ were already winding down, or were not on track to reach their maximum spending allotment.….”
——————
I have two thoughts on this. First, if they were winding down then it’s OK to cut them. Second, I think most of us know that stuff in the government tends to be funded over and over and over…as if it is an “auto pay” to Columbia House Records or your local gym.
Finally, having done DOGE style process reengineering back in the 90’s I know that without complete buy-in from your staff and management that these changes will revert to their original state if they are not watched. Habits in any organization are tough to break. This is even more so when there is a lot of money involved.
The Congress and the Federal unions are the textbook classes of people who don’t like change. They will just ride this out and go back to their useless ways soon. It’s not Musk’s or Trump’s fault. There will be a crisis that will jolt the government. It will either be an economic crisis or war. That is the ONLY think that will change these people.
(Of course vegetable carts and guillotines work too, but that is a bit extreme.)
NYT via The Daily Mail -no credibility, none.
“If a million dollar mistake in the Federal budget is just a rounding error maybe that’s part of the problem.”
In the late 1970’s my employer was acquired by another company, founded in the 1930’s, whose founder was still active as chairman of the board. Soon after the acquisition closed he visited the headquarters of the acquired company. During the visit he looked through a number of the wastebaskets in various offices pulling out paper clips, blank unused pieces of paper and envelopes, empty file folders, and other items which could still be used. He repeatedly made the point that this kind of waste cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two excellent lessons early in my career:
1). No easy savings is too small to ignore.
2). The sum of thousands of small savings is significant and worth the small effort required to realize.
Bullshit. Elon did fantastic work. Congress and the deep state despised it and freaked out at what he exposed. When he turned his sights in the Treasury dept Bissent lost his cool. Same for Rubio at State.
Then Trump turned on him.
Now we are setting the further vilification of Elon.
I figured.
What a load of Dung from the NYT!
DOGE never had a chance with every judge blocking them from cutting Federal Government waste. Add in a STUPID budge from Joe Biden and the Democrats of some 7.4-8 Trillion, or about 4 Trillion of debt. Sprinkle in some Fraud like California, Minn. and multiple other states, and PRESTO we have a spending increase. A Spending increase that would have been MUCH larger without Trump and DOGE.
Democrats scream “Unaffordable” while printed dollars buy up all the housing and apartments for illegals and devalue the currency. Now the NYT screams about budget, when they did nothing to tell the public the truth about ‘throwing gold bars off the Titanic’ Biden economy.
“One $500 million contract from the Department of Energy was counted as cancelled twice”
Given the state of the bureaucracy in the DoE, this actually makes sense.
One contract shared across 2 departments in DoE and the 2 never communicated to each other their use ($$$).
It, in all essence, became 2 contracts.
incorrectly characterized, according to the Times.
according to the Times.
The deep dimwit state never stops. I am afraid that it may have to come to heads on pikes or some such medieval thing. How sad...
Um. $6.95 T increasing to $7.01 T is less than a 1 % increase!!! In Washington, that is a YUGE WIN!!
Do they really think that happens without Trump and Doge?
The deficit is also reduced by about 2%. Still a lot of work to be done here.
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