A MAGA talking point that is making the rounds in right-wing media is "DOGE brings the receipts."
Supporters of the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by SpaceX/Tesla/X.com CEO Elon Musk, are claiming that DOGE is saving taxpayers billions of dollars. But according to the New York Times, a contract that DOGE identified as an $8 billion contract was actually an $8 million contract.
The contract, the Times reports, was with a company called D&G Support Services and offered "program and technical support" for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — an agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). On Monday, February 17, DOGE published a list of government contracts it had canceled, including that one.
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DOGE claimed that it was saving taxpayers around $16 billion by eliminating those contracts. But the list, according to the Times, "vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract."
"It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump Administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office," Times reporters Aatish Bhatia, Josh Katz, Margot Sanger-Katz and Ethan Singer explain. "But it is also clear that the government was not spending $8 billion on the contract. In the two and a half years since it was signed, $2.5 million had been spent; the contract appeared set to expire in 2027."
Journalist Jim Roberts highlighted the Times' reporting in a February 19 post on the Musk-owned X. And in a separate DOGE-related tweet, Roberts described far-right Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) as "embarrassing" for comparing, during a CNN interview, 20-year-old DOGE tech bros to U.S. soldiers who were 20 when they fought Japanese forces during World War 2.
According to the Times, DOGE didn't acknowledge its error on the value of the D&G/ICE contract.
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"The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract's value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings," the Times reporters note. "On Tuesday night, (February 18), around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion."
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Read the New York Times' full article at this link (subscription required).