David Marchese

You can see how it gets on the wall of receipts, which is that Treasury, which oversees IRS, tweets at Doge and says, hey, Doge, look at this incredible contract. We canceled a $1.9 billion IT contract. Doge says, hey, that's fantastic.

They retweet it, post a screenshot from the federal procurement data system that shows a terminated contract, and then put that savings, $1.9 billion, onto the wall of receipts. The problem is that when you call the vendor that was listed as having its contract canceled, that contract was canceled under President Joe Biden. It was canceled last fall for reasons that had nothing to do with Doge.

They retweet it, post a screenshot from the federal procurement data system that shows a terminated contract, and then put that savings, $1.9 billion, onto the wall of receipts. The problem is that when you call the vendor that was listed as having its contract canceled, that contract was canceled under President Joe Biden. It was canceled last fall for reasons that had nothing to do with Doge.

Oh. And that's not the only example of that. One of the bigger contracts for more than $50 million in savings is a Department of Homeland Security contract that Doge says was canceled. It was an IT contract that the Coast Guard had entered into. But all you got to do is click on the link to see the page from the federal procurement system and you'll see that contract ended in 2005.

Oh. And that's not the only example of that. One of the bigger contracts for more than $50 million in savings is a Department of Homeland Security contract that Doge says was canceled. It was an IT contract that the Coast Guard had entered into. But all you got to do is click on the link to see the page from the federal procurement system and you'll see that contract ended in 2005.

Well, what we know is that the cuts that are on the wall are suggested by the agencies. The agencies send them to Doge and then Doge posts them on the wall.

Well, what we know is that the cuts that are on the wall are suggested by the agencies. The agencies send them to Doge and then Doge posts them on the wall.

I can't get into the head of the people at the agencies to know if this is their incompetence or if they are trying to maybe avoid having to make real cuts by, you know, sort of placating Doge with some bogus cuts that don't cost them anything. What we can tell, though, from looking at this is something about Doge's own quality control and interest in quality control.

I can't get into the head of the people at the agencies to know if this is their incompetence or if they are trying to maybe avoid having to make real cuts by, you know, sort of placating Doge with some bogus cuts that don't cost them anything. What we can tell, though, from looking at this is something about Doge's own quality control and interest in quality control.

The amount of effort it takes to figure out that some of these claims are wrong is not huge. Like, you don't need a master's degree in government contracting. All you'd have to do is click on the link and realize, oh, wait, this contract expired in June 2005. And if they're missing that kind of mistake, it doesn't really seem like anyone is looking at these things.

The amount of effort it takes to figure out that some of these claims are wrong is not huge. Like, you don't need a master's degree in government contracting. All you'd have to do is click on the link and realize, oh, wait, this contract expired in June 2005. And if they're missing that kind of mistake, it doesn't really seem like anyone is looking at these things.

They're just sort of posting them on the wall and claiming credit for them.

They're just sort of posting them on the wall and claiming credit for them.

So I have not been through every single cut on the list. We're still working through them. But after we did some initial reporting, Doge deleted what had been the top five items on their original wall of receipts. They got rid of all of them. And the savings they had claimed from that, which had been over $10 billion, declined to a few million.

So I have not been through every single cut on the list. We're still working through them. But after we did some initial reporting, Doge deleted what had been the top five items on their original wall of receipts. They got rid of all of them. And the savings they had claimed from that, which had been over $10 billion, declined to a few million.

That doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence for the accuracy of the rest of the data that we haven't gone through yet.

That doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence for the accuracy of the rest of the data that we haven't gone through yet.

The Times had a great story about the people who work for Doge. They identified more than 40 people who are working either at the central Doge office, which is within the White House, or out in agencies sort of under the control of Doge. And they're, by and large, not people who have experience in government there.

The Times had a great story about the people who work for Doge. They identified more than 40 people who are working either at the central Doge office, which is within the White House, or out in agencies sort of under the control of Doge. And they're, by and large, not people who have experience in government there.

They're coders, they're software engineers, they're sort of people who are close to Elon Musk and go from company to company. And to the degree that they have experience managing large organizations, it's something like Twitter or Tesla or SpaceX, very different organizations. And as big as they are, much smaller organizations than the one they're in charge of now.