The $21.7B Blunder: Analyzing the Waste Generated by Doge [pdf]

washingtonpost.com

53 points·cratermoon··6 comments

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Why is this a Washington Post hosted PDF and not an article somewhere....

Sen. Blumenthal's website release perhaps:

https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/07/...

PDF: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/li...

20b losses for taxpayers

2b in reduced liabilities for Elon‘s companies

The net savings are probably positive. DOGE's stated savings are 199B, so that would leave 177.3B in savings.

If DOGE is overstating savings, I doubt they are doing so by 900% which is what it would take for savings to dip into negative territory. Either that or losses are severely understated, but again if so probably not by enough.

When I stopped paying attention to their bull, they were overstating by way more than 90%. The article cites a study saying DOGE’s overstatement was about 90% of the total number in the end.

Also, the analysis in the study is conservative, and does not include follow on effects due to obvious immediate economic damage from the cuts (which seem to have been chosen to maximize damage to the economy).

$21.7B net cost is probably too low if you include that. If you value the programs that were eliminated at $0, the net cost was still in the billions.

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