The New York Times wrote an article overnight accusing DOGE of inflating their numbers to show massive cost saving.
Here’s what they wrote:
The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.
Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But it appears that the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual intended value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.
The contract, with a company called D&G Support Services, was to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at ICE. The Trump administration has been purging diversity programs from the federal government.
But DOGE just responded, saying this accusation if factually inaccurate. They say that when the amount was initially entered in 2022, it was mistakenly entered as $8 billion. DOGE found this error in January and has since corrected it to $8 million:
This is inaccurate.
In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly. DOGE has always used the correct $8M in its… https://t.co/sYpfDwW9ZI pic.twitter.com/nOttcUuBGC— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 19, 2025
In other words, DOGE didn’t falsely inflate anything. So why did it show up on their website? They explain:
Note that the DOGE website pulls from FPDS. If there is an error in FPDS, there can temporarily be a display error on the DOGE website until FPDS and the website link are updated. This appears to be rare, but we will strive to point it out when it occurs.
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 19, 2025
In other words, it’s another fake news article by the garbage media who can’t wait to pounce on all things Trump. It’s like it’s 2016 all over again.