The Ministry of Government Efficiency’s “Wall of Receipts” failed. According to the Associated Press, 40% of all federal contracts will not save any money for the United States at all. The Associated Press report was published on the same day, and the Office of Government Responsibility, a 103-year-old agency, released its own report on where Washington can trim budgets and save money.
GAO is an old office that knows how Washington works, understands its players, and takes the time to make careful and well-researched advice on how to save money from American taxpayers. Doge is only a few months old and is more interested in memes and social media crazy interest than actual spending cuts.
The evidence lies in the results.
Elon Musk made a lot of George responsible for the “people” and had a lot of receipts to show how good his business with additional omitted costs is. He published 1,125 lists of Doge’s terminated contracts. In many cases listed, the money has been spent and has not been recovered. This is not a list of savings, but a list of places where the government spends money or spends money in ways Musk doesn’t like.
According to the Associated Press, 417 of the government contracts will not save anyone any money. Musk and his doe relatives obviously don’t know how to read the government contract. There are a lot to do. They may also be just lying.
The wall of receipts is a long and daunting list of contents about cancellations, the total value of the contract, and a brief description of the government’s savings by canceling that amount. It even contains links to contract pages in the federal procurement data system, an online database of government contracts.
Much of the content on the Doge list is subscription to news services like Bloomberg and Politico, sometimes even paid a few years ago. There are also trainings for software licenses that have been purchased and trained. In 2024, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid a software license of Winzip $20,472.38. Also in 2024, the Ministry of Agriculture spent $23,520 on a political subscription. In both cases, the money has been spent. But both are on the porch list.
One of the frustrating things about Doge and Musk’s approach is that waste, fraud and abuse by the U.S. government are a real problem. Another contract on the Doge cutting board is the USAID Media project, which cost $227,392 to create YouTube videos about big cats and their surrounding protection issues. Making YouTube videos about cats seems to be a lot of money.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a research group working for Congress. Every year, it publishes a list of “high risk” federal budget lists that are prone to waste, fraud and abuse. This year’s report is 303 pages long. It highlights 38 areas and DC should detect if real savings are needed.
GAO has a reliable record. “Over time, the progress on our list has resulted in about $759 billion in savings, but there is more on the table,” GAO said in its report. Accordingly, GAO has helped U.S. tax payments over the past two years,” he said. People are $84 billion.
So what does GAO see as a big spending issue? The number of disasters has increased due to climate change, IRS-induced refund taxes, poor property holdings, payment fraud and Pentagon’s out-of-control spending.
Of these issues, the Pentagon is at the top of the list. This is a trillion dollars of monsters spend more money than most other government agencies combined. Duger and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised a cut, but the proposed $50 billion is a bucket of nearly a trillion dollars in spending each year. Many of the Department of Defense’s most expensive programs are on the exemption list, including a $1.7 trillion upgrade to U.S. nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Under Trump, other issues may not improve. The government has cut staff from the Federal Emergency Administration (EMA) and the IRS. This will make it even more difficult to manage disasters from climate change and collect disasters that owe to government taxes.
Examining the General’s office is another important tool to combat government waste, fraud and abuse. These independent agencies within the government conduct complex investigations into various departments of the government and constantly cause waste, fraud and abuse.
Trump fired 17 of them.
Doge, Trump and Musk cut federal spending performance. There is no plan here, and there is no real goal. The U.S. federal government spends too much money, which is true, but Trump and Musk are firing everyone who knows the body is buried. They can go through long and complex reports and work with Congress to cut real spending down many expensive and unnecessary government plans.
Instead, they do things that look good online. They posted a big list on a stupid website named meme dog. Includes their countless list of failures.
