DOGE's 'wall of receipts' is a farce.
Always wrong': NYT reporter takes wrecking ball to DOGE's 'wall of receipts'
By Brrad Reed/Raw Story
March 18, 2025 3:56PM ET
New York Times reporter David Fahrenthold on Tuesday took a wrecking ball to efforts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to demonstrate how much money they are saving American taxpayers.
Writing on Bluesky, Fahrenthold walked through the ways in which Musk and his DOGE team make fundamental errors in tallying up the purported savings they're notching up as they conduct a slash-and-burn campaign against the federal workforce.
In fact, Fahrenthold has found that "the largest item" on DOGE's list of receipts "has always been wrong."
When the Wall of Receipts was first posted, Elon Musk's group said its largest savings was an $8 billion cut at ICE," he explained. "But that was a typo in government records. DOGE reduced the savings to $8 million, then zero."
But the DOGE follies didn't stop there.
"Then DOGE said its largest savings had come from terminating a USAID contract worth $655 million," he wrote. "But they had triple-counted the same cancellation, and also greatly over-estimated what that cancellation was worth. That savings, too, was eventually reduced to $0."
The reporter then cited a particularly eye-opening example of DOGE inteptitude.
"Next, DOGE said its largest savings came from cancelling a $1.9B contract at the IRS," explained Fahrenthold. "But that contract had been cancelled when Joe Biden was president. DOGE later deleted the claim."
The bottom line, argues Fahrenthold, is that "nobody benefits if DOGE is using bad data."
"Won't it be harder to find real waste or fraud if their data is plagued by errors?" he asked.
By Brrad Reed/Raw Story
March 18, 2025 3:56PM ET
New York Times reporter David Fahrenthold on Tuesday took a wrecking ball to efforts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to demonstrate how much money they are saving American taxpayers.
Writing on Bluesky, Fahrenthold walked through the ways in which Musk and his DOGE team make fundamental errors in tallying up the purported savings they're notching up as they conduct a slash-and-burn campaign against the federal workforce.
In fact, Fahrenthold has found that "the largest item" on DOGE's list of receipts "has always been wrong."
When the Wall of Receipts was first posted, Elon Musk's group said its largest savings was an $8 billion cut at ICE," he explained. "But that was a typo in government records. DOGE reduced the savings to $8 million, then zero."
But the DOGE follies didn't stop there.
"Then DOGE said its largest savings had come from terminating a USAID contract worth $655 million," he wrote. "But they had triple-counted the same cancellation, and also greatly over-estimated what that cancellation was worth. That savings, too, was eventually reduced to $0."
The reporter then cited a particularly eye-opening example of DOGE inteptitude.
"Next, DOGE said its largest savings came from cancelling a $1.9B contract at the IRS," explained Fahrenthold. "But that contract had been cancelled when Joe Biden was president. DOGE later deleted the claim."
The bottom line, argues Fahrenthold, is that "nobody benefits if DOGE is using bad data."
"Won't it be harder to find real waste or fraud if their data is plagued by errors?" he asked.
