“Doge is not a serious exercise,” said Jessica Riedl, a researcher at Manhattan Institute, a fiscally conservative Think Tank that supports the reduction of government size. He estimates that Doge has saved just 5,000 million dollars to date and believes that he will end up costing more than he saves.
The examples – until now not reported – cover 14 government agencies and were reported in reuters interviews with three dozen federal employees, union representatives and governance experts.
Although these testimonies do not paint a complete panorama of the Government Efficiency Department headed by Musk to drastically reduce the cost and size of the state apparatus, they do reveal collateral damage derived from the effort to make the extensive federal bureaucracy more efficient.
Consulted by the effects of Doge’s cuts on government efficiency, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said that Musk’s team “has already modernized government technology, avoided fraud, simplified processes and identified billions of dollars in savings for US taxpayers.”
Save billions
Musk confirmed Tuesday that next month he will leave his role in front of Doge. His 130 -day mandate as a special government employee will end at the end of May. He said he will continue to help Trump reform the government, but not full time. His retirement leaves Doge’s future, although experts believe that the cuts will continue.
Until now, Musk and his team have presented little concrete evidence that the government is working more efficiently as a result of mass layoffs and terminated contracts.
Doge teams, which have infiltrated multiple government agencies and computer systems, operate with great secrecy, according to dozens of officials.
The Doge website, which publishes updates on the alleged savings generated – 160,000 million dollars to date – has been plagued with errors and corrections.
The White House offered examples of savings, including: the discovery of more than 630 million dollars in fraudulent loans granted by the small businesses to people over 115 or under 11 between 2020 and 2021; 382 million dollars in fraudulent unemployment payments detected by the Department of Labor since 2020; and the cut of 18 million dollars in rentals by relocating personnel of the Environmental Protection Agency outside a building in Washington. Reuters could not independently verify those figures.
Doge did not respond to comments requests. In an interview with Bret Baier, by Fox News, on March 27, Musk said his team performs the cuts carefully, admits errors and corrects them, and has discovered “amazing amounts” of waste and fraud.
Doge Crusade
In his crusade for reducing costs, Doge claims to have canceled almost 500,000 government credit cards. It has also imposed an expenditure limit of 1 dollar to many others, and centralized decision making at the central headquarters of some agencies. This means that managers in regional offices cannot buy basic supplies.
In a center of the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, a scientist took authorization to buy 200 dollars on dry ice necessary to preserve urine samples, a purchase that is usually made in a local supermarket. As many employees can no longer make purchases, a colleague from another regional office that still had a government card paid dry ice, but had to send it to the laboratory, with an additional cost of $ 100, according to a source.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which supervise the Institute, did not respond to the request for comments.
Doge and the White House have also banned many agencies to communicate with external suppliers, paralyzing thousands of federal contracts.
A victim of that prohibition: an instrument of chemical analysis of almost half a million dollars in a center of the CDC in Cincinnati, which has not used months because scientists cannot coordinate a training with the supplier, according to a source.
In the SSA, for a period of four days in the first week of March, computer systems collapsed 10 times. As a quarter of IT staff, it was fired or resigned, it takes longer to restore the system, which interrupts the processing of applications, a worker in the technical area said.
Few deny that SSA computer systems are obsolete, they usually collapse and need update. Musk told Baier that the systems “are failing” and that “we are fixing them.”
Chau Humanitarian aid
Since its creation on Trump’s first day in the White House, Doge has practically dismantled the US agency for international development (USAID), which provides global humanitarian aid, canceling more than 80 % of its programs. Almost all agency employees will be fired in September, and all its offices abroad will close, with some functions absorbed by the State Department.
At the domestic level, government reform has resulted in the dismissal, renunciation or anticipated withdrawal of 260,000 public employees, according to a Reuters count.
More than 20,000 employees in the trial period – recognized or reassigned – were fired in February. After judicial failures, they were reinstated but sent home with full salary. Now, most are being fired again after new judicial resolutions.
Trump and Musk have said that the government is plagued with fraud and waste. Few officials and experts deny it, but point out that there are already people within the bureaucracy who work to save money to the taxpayer. Even so, some of these offices have been the target of Doge’s cuts.
In January, Trump fired 17 general inspectors, whose function is precisely to act as internal auditors to detect inefficiencies and fraud.
Christi Grimm, farewell as Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, told Reuters that he had identified 14,500 million dollars for potential recovery – “Count and sound money that was expected to return to the treasure” – thanks to audits and investigations.
Last month, Doge eliminated one of the few government units dedicated to improving technology in the public sector: a 90 members known as 18F.
Waldo Jachch, who worked in 18F between 2016 and 2020, said the team saved 500 million dollars in just three days after discovering that two departments were doing the same job without knowing it.
Reuters could not verify that data independently.
“18F worked exactly as Musk and his team say they want the government to work. But when they found it, they destroyed it,” said Jachch.
Thomas Shedd, an official appointed by Trump in the General Services Administration, described 18F as “non -critical” in an email to the staff last month.
Source: Ambito
