Interview with Blaeser:
What was the most surprising finding from your reporting?
The way the administration has taken action (or not) on the contracts it has listed for termination, particularly when it comes to contracts’ ceiling value. For context, one expert explained the ceiling value on a contract as a “credit card limit.” So, imagine lowering your credit card limit by $20,000 and saying you just saved $20,000. That is exactly what DOGE is doing to calculate savings. But even when using that fuzzy logic, DOGE still falls short of its claims by over half. And even that amount won’t go toward reducing the deficit.
Why? Because agencies have to spend the funds Congress gives them.
What does it tell us about the quality or the scope of DOGE’s work?
In reality, we won’t know the true scope or impact of DOGE’s terminated contracts for years. At most, DOGE’s savings claims for canceled contracts amounts to the absolute maximum the government could avoid paying on these specific deals. That number, known as the “contract ceiling,” was never guaranteed to be spent in the first place.
There’s also no way to predict how much terminating these contracts will actually cost. There is an inevitable price tag associated with closing out a contract — costs like outstanding payments, litigation fees or the cost of administrative time.
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