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American taxpayers are still footing the bill for DOGE disaster [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-11
The entire reason the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was allowed to rampage through the government was that it would save literal trillions in taxpayer money. But for an entity supposedly set up to root out fraud and waste, run by baby IT geniuses, somehow the federal government is on track to spend more on IT contracts than ever before.
Heckuva job, DOGEy.
Federal agencies are set to spend $50 billion in the fourth quarter alone, with overall IT spending pushing $130 billion for FY 2025, a $4 billion jump from the previous year. DOGE was literally created for “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity.” The administration has insisted it was crucial that DOGE’s tween fascists be granted access to databases containing the most sensitive information about Americans, all in the name of cost cutting.
“DOGE” by Time Campbell
Remember when Elon Musk was boasting that DOGE was going to save the taxpayers $2 trillion? And then maybe it was going to be $150 billion? At best, DOGE maybe saved the government $1.4 billion, a number that is more than offset by the cost of DOGE itself, which somehow managed to burn through $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars in just six months.
One of the most likely reasons DOGE’s cost-cutting spree didn’t result in government IT contracting taking a hit is that the administration continues to spend extremely freely with technology companies, including sweet no-bid contracts. Peter Thiel’s Palantir has made out like a bandit, with the company’s government revenue up $370 million over this time last year.
In July, Palantir scored a $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army that “establishes a comprehensive framework for the Army’s future software and data needs.” The Army said the new agreement would consolidate existing software contracts and lead to “significant cost efficiencies across mission-critical programs.”
So, in other words, Palantir is getting billions to do the things DOGE said it would do. So efficient!
The administration is also eager to throw taxpayer money at the Big Tech companies that have shown such fealty to Trump. The General Services Administration is touting how great it is that, rather than develop AI technologies in-house, your taxpayer dollars will instead go to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, so that agencies can integrate crappy chatbots into their workflow or whatever.
Related | Elon Musk is gone, but 'Big Balls' remains—and we're all paying for him
In case that wasn’t wasteful enough, the Department of Defense has awarded those same three companies up to $200 million each to support warfighters and leverage technology and a bunch of other buzzwords. Elon Musk’s xAI got the same sweet deal.
And let’s not forget no-bid contracts worth millions to smaller technology companies. The government gave Workday, which provides cloud-based human resources platforms, a sole-source contract, saying only Workday could meet the government’s needs. Of course, the Office of Personnel Management already had a successful in-house HR platform, but why would you want to use that when you could pay a private company instead? And of course, it is kinda weird to give a sole-source contract to Workday instead of open bidding when there are giant companies, like ADP, that also provide these services.
Meanwhile, while Trump is shoveling government cash out the window to private companies as fast as he can, we also get the privilege of paying top-dollar government salaries for the little DOGE creeps who remain in the government. Did you know that Edward “Big Balls” Coristine is making at least $125,000 a year to do whatever it is he is still doing?
It was never about cutting spending, and it was always about transforming tax dollars into private profits. And apparently it’s going to keep getting more expensive.
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