{"id":44935,"date":"2026-02-24T12:44:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/?post_type=impact&#038;p=44935"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:52:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:52:37","slug":"doges-big-savings","status":"publish","type":"impact","link":"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/impact\/doges-big-savings\/","title":{"rendered":"Exposing the Truth Behind DOGE\u2019s \u201cBig Savings\u201d"},"template":"","issue_tax":[],"topic_tax":[],"program_tax":[],"project_tax":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-44935","impact","type-impact","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"details":{"abstract":"","featured_image":48320,"override_caption":false,"caption":""},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"add_background_color":true,"content":"<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In early 2025, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claimed it had eliminated <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hundreds of billions of dollars<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in so-called wasteful government spending by cancelling federal contracts, including nearly $900 million at the U.S. Department of Education. But in a data-driven analysis, the New America Education Policy Program demonstrated that these figures were inflated, misleading, and didn\u2019t reflect real savings.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using publicly available contract data from USAspending.gov and DOGE\u2019s own releases, New America showed that <strong>more than half of what DOGE cited as savings<\/strong> was based on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">contract ceiling values<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that might never have been spent. In reality, the total value of the terminated contracts was closer to $676 million, not $881 million\u2014and once accounting for already-incurred expenditures, realistic \u201csavings\u201d amounted to roughly $278 million.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps more importantly, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/education-policy\/edcentral\/doge-dodges-the-truth-about-wasteful-spending\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">analysis<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> highlighted that some contracts funded legally required research and operations, meaning simply cancelling them could create duplicated costs, delayed projects, or require rebidding\u2014risking taxpayers paying <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">twice<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for the same work.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This work helped ground the national debate over DOGE\u2019s claims in verifiable evidence, pushing back against exaggerated rhetoric and ensuring that policymakers, the media, and the public had accurate figures to base their decisions on.<\/span>","":null,"drop_cap":false,"anchor_id":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_featured_content_insights","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_featured_content_insights":{"number_of_insights":"one","one_insight":[7125],"two_insights":null,"":null,"anchor_id":""}}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.1 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - 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