Thread by @electricfutures

SCOOP: @DOGE does damage control

A diff of "savings" estimates from doge.gov between today and yesterday shows that 4 rows have been edited - all corresponding to errors I called out in my thread yesterday. Let's see what they changed!

🧵 x.com/DOGE/status/18…

Change #1 pertains to the (now infamous) $8B vs. $8M mistake, which @DOGE claims was not factored into their total savings estimate. Thus, while the website now lists $8B less in savings, the headline $55B remains unchanged. Concerning...

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891898340213710861

Change #2 pertains to the $2B in savings obtained by triple counting the total set-aside for a one USAID IDV. @DOGE saw that I said it was triple-counted and arbitrarily deleted two of the rows. The third is still erroneously listed as $655M.

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891898342646362558

Change #3 pertains to the $1B IT services contract for SSA. I noted that 80% of the funding was already spent, and they've now updated the savings to reflect that only $230M remains. Seems good, right? Not so fast...

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891904556767781163

What's important to note here is that the *only things that got fixed* were the things I called them out for. Those were examples. DOGE did NOT change the underlying flaws in how they were estimating savings for any of the other contracts, which all show 0 diff from yesterday.

For example, the "fix" that was applied to the SSA IT contract needs to be applied to just about every other contract in the entire list. The USAID IDV still lists $655M when the real savings would be an order of magnitude smaller. They have not accounted for anything correctly.

And despite applying most of the changes I called for in my original thread, they STILL CLAIM TO HAVE SAVED $55B. The savings listed dropped from $16.5B to $6.5B! If this is 20% of the total, like they also claim, the total would be $32.5B! (In reality still a huge overestimate!)

Do they really expect us to believe these were all known issues - that none affect the total estimated savings? If so, how the hell were they unable to flag any of them before publishing? Why is the website scraping from FPDS if their internal calculations are more sophisticated?

The answer is that DOGE is not operating in good faith. They made these changes to shut me up, and ensure anyone coming into the conversation late would be confused, as none of the errors I referenced are visible anymore.

They have made no obvious attempt to understand the nature of these errors or to update their methodology. At least for the time being, given that they've repeatedly attempted to conceal mistakes without admitting the mistakes, it is clear as day that the $55B is fraudulent.

Also, somewhat amusingly: while the $8B mistake was independently reported by several outlets including NYT, and the $1B IT glitch was reported by @thedailybeast (thanks for quoting me!), nobody else as far as I know had called out the $2B IDV mistake.

DOGE is reading my tweets.

@Luckyioo @DOGE They addressed a single error that was too large to ignore (while lying about the nature of the mistake to avoid accountability) and quietly changed the others while pretending none of these changes had any impact on their estimates (another lie).

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1892356210315170070

@michaelwhill2 @DOGE After I raised hell, getting millions of views on posts drawing attention to their coverup, they finally changed the website AGAIN to say $8M, and claimed it did not figure into their total estimate of $55B because they knew $8M was the number all along.

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1892077618041639218

@Luckyioo @clkerst @DOGE They claim $55B in savings, in reality the spending cuts may amount to less than $1B, and the loss of tax revenue from adverse economic impact may exceed that. We don't KNOW because they have nobody with the necessary skills making these evidence-based decisions.

@Luckyioo @clkerst @DOGE @NPR I've already explained why spending cuts are not equivalent to savings. "Is this getting us closer to our goal? I very explicitly said NO, we don't know that without proper analysis. You want them to be savings. That does not make them so. You're delusional.

@Luckyioo @clkerst @DOGE @NPR What IS mathematically impossible is balancing the budget by finding over $1T of fraud and waste, because the deficit is due to the relative balances of spending, taxation, and economic growth, none of which DOGE has any influence over. It is an exercise in futility.

@Luckyioo @clkerst @DOGE @NPR We already had a government agency that audited government spending and did a much better job than DOGE at eliminating waste. It is called GAO. Do some reading and stop speaking out of your ass.

https://x.com/robbsma/status/1892299761266373107

@Sotto8686 @Wizard_of_Rez @DOGE If the process were truly transparent, any revisions would be noted in a changelog and reflected in the total savings estimate.

The fact that they can modify numbers at will to look more believable without affecting their headline number makes the whole thing reek of fraud.

@mjegin @DOGE Therefore, any policy that increases the likelihood of recession is bad for the budget. Cutting fed jobs and contracts that support private sector jobs does that. We need stability & to inflate away the debt. The larger we let it grow the more painful the inflation will be.

@mjegin @DOGE Now we also have a problem of high debt with massive interest expense. Money creation and debt issuance at low rates are mathematically the only real way out.

@mjegin @DOGE And this was without taking into consideration/knowing just how bad the GOP budget would be. They only care about balance in a performative sense; ultimately their singular goal is to reduce tax burden of the wealthy.