While George W. Bush was president, the American Coast Guard signed a contract for administrative assistance from a company in North Virginia. She paid $ 144,000, and the contract was completed by June 30, 2005.
Twenty years have passed. The presidents came and went.
Last week, the Elon Musk restructuring team, which was launched by the Ministry of Governmental Efficiency or Doug, said that it has just canceled the coast guard contract, which has not been dead for a long time-and thus, US taxpayers saved $ 53.7 million.
This allegation, which was published on the group’s “receipt wall”, is experts puzzled in federal contract. There were others like that. Even after Mr. Musk group Delete many big mistakes The New York Times found its website claims on the Internet last week that it added new mistakes – claiming credit for contracts to “cancel” contracts that have already ended under the former presidents.
“These are not savings,” said Lisa Xia Mondand, whose company is tracked, Federal Pulse, Federal spending. “Money has been spent. Duration is empty.”
These errors do not mean that Duji did not hurt the federal government. She deeply, by pushing wide hairstyles from employees, canceling active contracts, and helping the United States Agency for International Development.
However, repeated errors raised questions about the quality of information posed by the Musk team, including whether the other sections are misleading. The mistakes seem to question the efficiency of team members – whether they understand the government well enough to reduce them while avoiding a disaster.
“It is clear that they do not understand,” said Eric Franklin, CEO of Irmex, who advises the government on contracting procedures. His private company was the subject of a mistake on the “receipt wall” in Dog. Mr. Musk Group claimed that it had provided 14 million dollars by canceling one of its contracts – which ended in 2021.
“It is closer to the bull in the China store,” said Mr. Franklin. “And what does it end up? It is just a big chaos.”
At the White House, a senior administration official presented a partial explanation, saying that the information on the receipt wall was provided by individual federal agencies – many of which included employees from the MUSK group. The official, who spoke, said, provided that his identity was not disclosed because he was not allowed to describe Dog’s methods, then I examined Mr. Musk’s group of the accuracy of the agency’s claims.
Why are there still a lot of mistakes? The official said that individual agencies should answer this question. On her website, Dog says she is trying to improve her data, and she asks readers to notify her of potential errors.
Lost identifiers
Agencies are undergoing pressure to find budget discounts for Mr. Musk Group to promote. The group has even created the “leaders painting” to measure either of them has been canceled more than others.
But in the databases of federal contracts, there is evidence that this rush is not well managed or adequately followed.
In the past, the government has set specific symbols to track large groups of contracts through various agencies related to a joint initiative, such as federal response to Covid-19s. This makes it easy to find all the contracts concerned.
But the contracts in the “receipt wall” have no such signature. This negligence may mean that there are errors in both directions – not only with ending contracts that do not already provide money, but also with contracts that were canceled through the group’s efforts but are not calculated.
Mr. Musk Group said it provided taxpayers $ 65 billion, by reducing contracts, contracts, federal employees and other items in the federal budget. But only two of these categories were separated: canceling contracts and contracts. When adding the subsidized DOGE savings to each element, these groups combined are about $ 10 billion, less than the total sixth.
When Dog published for the first time the list of contracts that were canceled, there were about 1,100 examples.
It was the largest five mistake.
In one case, Dog included a contract worth $ 8 million, as is the case in reality $ 8 billion. In another, I mistakenly returned the same contract of $ 655 million three times. In another, he erred that a huge contract was completely canceled in the Social Security Administration, providing $ 232 million. In fact, only a small project was canceled in this contract. Actual savings: $ 560,000.
By last week, all these claims disappeared. Dodge Reference Total savings of these five discounts from 10 billion dollars to about 19 million dollars.
Meanwhile, Mr. Musk Group also added about 1,100 newly canceled contracts to the list.
Wrong links
Among the new entries were many entrances that ended before President Trump took office.
Mr. Musk Group has been credited with canceling the contract of the Ministry of Treasury worth $ 1.9 billion, to work in information technology in the service of internal revenue. But he was already canceled in November, when President Biden was in office.
The Ministry of Treasury suggested that these pieces After x On February 19, two days later, the Times I mentioned It was canceled before Mr. Trump took office.
Three days after that, Dog raised the cancellation of the Biden era on its wall. The Ministry of Treasury did not answer questions about the contract.
Dog also claimed to cancel two different decades of the Coast Guard, which ended during the George W. Bush administration. In addition to 53 million dollars a contract This ended in 2005, Mr. Musk Group said it provided $ 53 million by canceling another a contract With the same seller. General contract data shows that one of them ended in 2006.
Deniece Peterson, the first manager for the Federal Market analysis at Deltek, said that both decades were part of a maximum spending agreement of $ 53 million. She said that the Coast Guard paid the seller about 35 million dollars over several years. All of her work has been completed under this agreement by 2011, and federal contract data shows that there are no suspended bills and no money has been spent more money.
Tricia McLauthlin, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Internal Security, did not explain the reason that the administration has received $ 106 million savings from ending these two dead decades. Instead, she answered questions from the Times via an email that says: “We are definitely excited about $ 100 million in taxpayer savings.”
Then there were links on the Doge site, which led to different decades from that distributor.
Dog claimed that she had provided $ 149 million by canceling a contract for three administrative assistants at the National Health Institutes of about $ 1.4 million.
However, the link led to a non -relevant contract page with a different company that supplies the refrigerated gases used in laboratories. This contract, which does not seem to be canceled, was worth only $ 118,000.
After asking about the mistakes, an official with the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services said that Duwaj is working to correct the site.
Emily Badger Contribution reports.
