“With Elon Musk at its head for its first four months, it is unsurprising that DOGE modeled itself on a defunct corporate motto, seeking to ‘move fast and break things,’” stated the report, which was spearheaded by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. “Yet DOGE seems to have stopped there, never taking the time to fix — let alone understand — the things it had broken.”
Through 54 pages, the report accused DOGE of wasting $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars. The vast majority of that figure — $14.8 million [sic] — comes from costs associated with DOGE’s “fork in the road” program, an option floated to federal employees earlier this year that offered full pay and benefits until Sept. 30, 2025, if employees left their posts.
Another $6.1 billion was spent on the 100,000 workers placed on administrative leave over the last six months, including the vast majority of staff at USAID, while other multimillion-dollar losses were the result of spoiled food aid, incinerated health commodities, and lost time due to DOGE-launched initiatives. The report also called out the recently signed $9 billion rescissions package, the bulk of which clawed back foreign assistance that had already been approved by the U.S. Congress.
Blumenthal paired the report with a letter to Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the Federal Reserve Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urging Horowitz to initiate a “comprehensive review of DOGE’s activities” to determine the “full scope of costs that DOGE’s careless actions have imposed.”
Add new comment