DOGE in Two Charts
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Published: 03/16/2025
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DOGE in Two Charts: 1. The DOGE Savings Gap and the missing $90B and 2. leveraging federal civilian workforce payroll
1. The DOGE Gap
The DOGE website claims Doge has saved $105B. The amount saved has moved around a lot as the initial data was replete with errors. Including one DHS contract for the entire amount of the DHS budget (the real number was $8M, not $8B).
I downloaded the DOGE data and looking at the actual individual line items from the three core areas where DOGE claimed savings - Contracts, Grants and Real Estate - they add up to only $19B. Compared to the purported savings of $105B, there is a gap of $90B. I know DOGE hasn't added all the contracts to the website but based on the errors and corrections so far, one should be skeptical of even the $19B (not least because some contracts were breached and damages may apply).
I found one large contract in the data that was duplicated on the DOGE website which resulted in its being double counted (this is likely an honest error due to lack of familiarity with how government contract reporting and accounting works). Not to mention the contracting company claimed the amount listed wasn't remotely close to what they actually earned.
And some of what DOGE found was legit and warrants further investigation (eg a church owned charity paid $18M/mo to operate empty shelters).
1. The DOGE Gap
The DOGE website claims Doge has saved $105B. The amount saved has moved around a lot as the initial data was replete with errors. Including one DHS contract for the entire amount of the DHS budget (the real number was $8M, not $8B).
I downloaded the DOGE data and looking at the actual individual line items from the three core areas where DOGE claimed savings - Contracts, Grants and Real Estate - they add up to only $19B. Compared to the purported savings of $105B, there is a gap of $90B. I know DOGE hasn't added all the contracts to the website but based on the errors and corrections so far, one should be skeptical of even the $19B (not least because some contracts were breached and damages may apply).
I found one large contract in the data that was duplicated on the DOGE website which resulted in its being double counted (this is likely an honest error due to lack of familiarity with how government contract reporting and accounting works). Not to mention the contracting company claimed the amount listed wasn't remotely close to what they actually earned.
And some of what DOGE found was legit and warrants further investigation (eg a church owned charity paid $18M/mo to operate empty shelters).
2. The gutting of the federal labor force and labor leverage
Everyone on Wall Street understands leverage. Leverage not only exists in capital markets, there is leverage in labor.
This is no less true in the government than it is in the private sector. Federal civilian payroll is only 4% of the total budget (see chart). Slashing payroll won't make a dent in the total budget. However, given the capricious and arbitrary (and some would say cruel) nature of the firings it's possible that the small dent made in the 4% of the pie puts the 96% at risk. Think about auditors, government ethics officers, HUD fraud investigators, bank examiners, inspectors general, IRS examiners, etc.
In addition to $ leverage, there is services leverage. Done without regard to the specific services provided, the downsizing puts government services at risk across all agencies (think VA hospitals, social security recipients, farmers who benefit from weather forecasts and local agriculture services).
Large scale reduction is needed given the frightening size of the budget. While it's too soon to tell whether and when we will feel the adverse effects of dollar or services leverage resulting from the layoffs, it will clearly be more than had the workforce review been conducted in a more systematic way.
Ignoring for a moment all the pending lawsuits related to the layoffs, the layoffs will save real money, in isolation. But don't be surprised to find tax collections down, HUD fraud increasing, social security fraud, Medicare fraud all increasing owing to loss of critical staff.
