Courtesy photo
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
“Well we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been … I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”
A beaming President Donald Trump sat looking up almost reverentially at Elon Musk as he assured reporters at a White House briefing on the Department of Government Efficiency in early February, that the public would know every detail of what the department was up to. That seemed to mean that the public would have an open window to view the massive cuts in government spending that Musk and Trump promised.
Transparency seemed a necessary watchword especially since Musk had repeatedly bragged that he would put the savings back into taxpayer’s pockets.
This is the first in a two-part series based on Hutchinson’s forthcoming book, “The Musk DOGE Fraud” (Middle Passage Press).
One of his first acts was to put up a website. The site would supposedly keep the public abreast of how much fat was being trimmed from government agencies and why the cuts were being made. The suspicion deepened that this was little more than a flossy public relations gambit by Musk when almost from the moment the site went up Musk posted what he called a “wall of receipts.”
He tossed out fantastic figures of billions of dollars cut from mass federal employee firings, agencies downsized, and contracts rescinded. It took virtually no time that the billions that Musk claimed saved were shown to be either accounting or clerical errors, sloppy, if not outright deliberate misstatements.
A close examination of the savings Musk listed came nowhere near the actual dollar figure. One example. In the wall of receipts he claimed that one Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract canceled saved $8 billion. The actual contract amount was $8 million. Even that was misleading. ICE never spent a penny of the $8 million. It was a credit line.
Other contracts that DOGE took credit for had either been paid or were canceled before DOGE came into existence. The repeated pattern of making exaggerated savings claims was constantly done with other claimed cuts.
Musk would loudly crow about a huge cost cut and list the dollar amount. A close check would find that the dollars were far less, in many cases, nonexistent, had not been spent or were solely credit lines that had never been used.
Other experts noted that the canceled contracts were for research studies that had been awarded, training that had been completed, software that had been purchased and for payment to interns at various government agencies who had long since completed their assignments and training, or for interns who have come and gone.
When all the errors were factored in, and the actual dollars Musk claimed were saved and totaled, the initial amount of $65 billion initially he tossed out as saved was in reality $2 billion. Musk went further.
He claimed or implied that many of the alleged cuts were made in contracts that were fraudulent. Experts disputed this. They found no evidence of fraud in the government contracts.
As for the $2 billion saved from the cuts that amounted to barely more than $2 in return to individual taxpayers.
That is just the tip of the little public relations game on cuts and savings that Trump and Musk play. When the actual dollars Trump claims will be cut are totaled, the savings to the government will be far less than claimed.
In fact, almost half of the spending cuts will save the government not a single dollar. The reason is simple. The contracts are legally binding. In most cases the contracted spending on goods and services has already been done.
One government contracting expert likened the Musk shell game to confiscating used ammunition after it had already been shot.
Trump officials retort that even if that is the case, it doesn’t really matter. The administration they say got rid of contracts that are as they put it “potential dead weight.” The problem with that is that the Trump claim of contracted money saved is the height of deception. They do not talk about the future they talk about the present and give the distinct impression that the dollars are real savings at the time.
Trump and Musk repeatedly take victory laps at the praise they get from many circles for their government assault. They are not about to let a little thing like facts about the paltry return and damaging effect of their anti-government crusade spoil the public adulation and more importantly the potential political gain.
But the brute fact is despite their lies and exaggerations about dollars saved can’t mask the bitter truth that they haven’t saved the taxpayers anything. Put another way, they haven’t shown anyone the money they promised everyone who would listen they stuff back in their pockets from a supposed bloated government.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the host of the weekly the Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestreamed. His political affairs commentaries can be found weekly on thehutchinsonreport.net.
