Nearly 40% of contracts cancelled by Trump’s cuts could produce no savings
The statistics were drawn from the White House’s own data.
Nearly 40% of the federal contracts which the Trump administration says it has cancelled as part of its cost-cutting programme are not expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.
The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), run by Elon Musk, last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts it terminated across the federal government.
Data published on Doge’s “Wall of Receipts” shows more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
That is usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and, in many cases, has already done so.
“Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”
Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to The Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue.
Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased and interns that have come and gone.
An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In all, Doge data says the 417 contracts in question had a total value of 478 million dollars (£378 million)
Dozens of other cancelled contracts are expected to yield little, if any, savings.
“It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Mr Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Tiefer said Doge appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken.
Doge says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save more than seven billion dollars (£5.5 billion) so far, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts.
The cancelled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend a maximum of 567,809 dollars (£449,364) with a furniture company.
Another already-spent 249,600 dollar (£197,508) contract went to a Washington DC firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration.
Some of the cancelled contracts were intended to modernise and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with Doge’s cost-cutting mission.
One of the largest went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganisation at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A maximum of 13.6 million dollars (£10.7 million) had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices.
