MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A central tenet of the government efficiency unit led by Elon Musk is cutting government spending. DOGE, Musk and President Trump have touted billions of dollars saved through terminating contracts deemed wasteful and in violation of Trump's executive orders. There's little transparency, though, about the changes, so NPR's Stephen Fowler has been digging into the data. Hi, Stephen.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey there.
KELLY: We are at three weeks and counting since Trump took office, since DOGE became part of the federal government. What is the score card so far? How is DOGE performing?
FOWLER: Well, it's hard to really say. DOGE doesn't have a functional website. They don't have a responsive press office. They don't share their work or evidence to back up the claims about savings and contract terminations. One of the only public places to find examples of DOGE's work has been on X - the social media site owned by Musk - where roughly three dozen posts by the DOGE account in recent weeks outlines billions in alleged cuts.
I asked a DOGE spokesperson for details like, what was canceled? How much was saved? How they calculated the savings. They didn't respond. But, Mary Louise, there's a way we can check the work ourselves. That's because there's public government spending databases like usaspending.gov and the Federal Procurement Data System that are updated daily.
KELLY: So as you have been combing through these public databases, Stephen, what have you found? What do they tell us?
FOWLER: Here's one example - a DOGE post on X from January 31 showed a spreadsheet claiming a billion dollars in savings on diversity, equity and inclusion related contracts. That sounds like a big number. But matching it up to the contract data posted online, there's more reason for skepticism. Half of that savings comes from just three contracts allegedly canceled for the Office of Personnel Management, but the only related cancellation I've found that's been terminated since January 20 is a contract worth $7 million.
Other contracts that have been canceled recently include cutting support for contract compliance and improving websites and data infrastructure - AKA, the type of stuff that DOGE is supposed to be doing. Another thing I found - many of the contracts already had a lot of money budgeted and spent before they were terminated. Jessica Tillipman, the associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington Law School, says canceling things doesn't let the government off the hook completely.
JESSICA TILLIPMAN: When the government terminates a contract for convenience, it's still obligated to pay for the work completed. This doesn't eliminate the government's responsibility for paying these sorts of costs.
FOWLER: So looking under the hood of these cancellations, a lot of times, it's mainly money that's already been budgeted and spent.
KELLY: Another thing President Trump has said, on his social media today, that DOGE has found fraud, has found abuse within all this government spending. Does that track with the data you're looking at?
FOWLER: Not that I could find specifically with these contracts, but it's also not to say it doesn't exist. The Government Accountability Office recently estimated anywhere between a quarter and a half a trillion dollars a year in recent losses to fraud, though it's just an estimate and primarily comes from larger quarters of government spending, like food assistance, unemployment benefits and health care. So when DOGE, Trump and Musk use words like fraud and corruption to describe these contracts, Tillipman says that's misrepresenting these sometime expensive changes from the last administration.
TILLIPMAN: The vast majority of what they are encountering is basically a disagreement with prior policy priorities. And those are very different concepts.
KELLY: In a sentence or two, Stephen, how does all this fit in with the larger reshaping of the federal government?
FOWLER: Well, it's really like scrounging around in your couch cushions for loose change because the biggest government spending are things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and defense, though, DOGE should be looking at that soon, too, according to Trump.
KELLY: NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Thanks.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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