Federal agencies have resurrected at least 44 government contracts in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative order, cutting out a New York Times federal spending data, leaving more than $220 million removed from his group’s so-called savings, according to an analysis of Elon Musk’s order to cut costs.
But Mr. Musk’s team went on to list 43 of the contracts as “termination” on its website and called it “wall of receipts.” The group even added some of them a few days or weeks after resurrection. The result is another result of a series of data errors on the website, making the group seem more successful than ever in reducing government costs.
The White House said it was a paperwork lag that was about to be repaired.
Recovered contracts range from small price agreements regarding software licenses to large partnerships with suppliers managing government data and records. Most contracts were canceled in February and March, when the Musk team of the government’s Ministry of Efficiency asked agencies to cut spending and staff significantly.
The agent then recovered them, sometimes a few days later. In one case, the Environmental Protection Agency resumed the contract only 2½ hours later. Mr Musk’s group still lists that it has been cancelled for weeks even after recovery and extension, so it will cost more than before.
These reversals not only illustrate the struggle of Mr. Musk’s team to produce accurate data on its outcome, but also demonstrate the shortcomings of its swift, secret spending cuts, part of a part of a $1 trillion effort to cut from the $7 trillion federal budget in a few months.
The contractor said Mr Musk’s team recommended killing contracts that could not die. Some legal requirements are required. Others need skills that governments need but do not.
Their reversal raises a broader question of how many deep but hasty budget cuts have had over time, weakening its long-term impact on bureaucracy and Washington bureaucracy.
In Northern Virginia, government contractor Larry Aldrich informed his company Brennsys in February that he lost a contract to make web design and website for Veterans Affairs, making videos, AboutfaceFor veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“VA can’t do the job alone,” Aldridge said. “They don’t have the manpower or skills.”
It didn’t last.
“Two weeks later, we got an email saying it would be restored,” Aldridge said. “I was like, wow, someone must go back and tell them, ‘We can’t do it.'”
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said the reversal showed that agencies had reassessed the cuts with the initial push to comply with Mr Musk’s instructions.
“After a thorough evaluation, the receipt wall provides the latest and most accurate information, which takes time,” Fields said. “The update of the Threshold Savings page will continue in a timely manner, and departments and institutions will continue to emphasize that the path to large savings is being realized.”
Mr. Musk’s group Listed More than 9,400 contracts requiring the cancellation of lenders, totaling $32 billion in savings. Musk’s group, in general, has saved taxpayers $165 billion.
Fields said the reversal determined by The New York Times is “very small potatoes” compared to that output.
He declined to say whether the contracts on the group’s list exceeded those found by the times.
The Times reveals these reversals by searching for federal procurement data systems, a government system that tracks contract changes. The Times looked for examples, contracts canceled on Mr. Musk’s website show signs of new life, such as adding funds, expanding timelines or updating, including words like “recarsind” or “replistate.”
The search resulted in 44 cost-cutting group zombies, contracted to be killed, but then recovered their lives.
The total may still be a primer, as the contract changes may take time to appear in the procurement data system, and since there is no standard way to identify recovery contracts in that system. The Times search may have missed some.
The resurrection began in mid-February.
Raquel Romero and her husband have a contract to provide leadership training to lawyers in the Ministry of Agriculture. them Lost It was obtained on February 14 Back Four days later.
It was a godsend for Ms. Romero and her husband, who made $45,000 when all their other federal businesses disappeared.
“We lost all the revenue we planned for the 2025 calendar year. We had to sell our homes. We are moving into apartments,” she said. “We are really lucky that we have this kind of resource that can take a while.”
The Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement that the contract had been restored after the discovery of “regulatory requirements.” It refuses to say which statute. Ms Romero said she believes that restoration is a product of personal intervention, thanks to a senior Ministry of Agriculture lawyer who has been a major supporter of her and her husband’s work.
“All I know is that she retires in two weeks,” Ms. Romero said.
Other reversals began to follow.
The Department of Veterans Affairs resumed 16 contracts, the largest number of any agency in the New York Times analysis.
The department declined to comment on the reasons. But veterans groups point out that some cancellations involve functions required by law, such as contractors helping veterans search military records for use as proof of gaining benefits.
The contract is recover Eight days later.
Musk’s group said in the Ministry of Education that it saved $38 million by removing the data repository that manages schools around the country. But lawmakers and advocacy groups object, saying the law requires data collection and that the government needs it to determine which schools qualify for certain grants, such as some tailor-made schools for rural areas.
“They should use a scalpel,” said Rachel Dinkes of the Association of Educational Companies’ Knowledge Alliance, including those who lost the contract. “But they went in with an axe and chopped it all up.”
That grant is recover 18 days later, but $17 million of its potential funds were withdrawn.
The shortest life span involves an EPA contract signed in 2023 to pay a Maryland-based company to help raise awareness about asthma. EPA canceled the contract 4:31 pm. According to contract data, March 7. Then, it resumed the contract – actually canceling the cancelled contract – 6:58 pm All night.
Why?
“Any recovered procurement reflects the agency’s determination of funding actions to support government priorities,” the EPA said. The agency declined to provide details about the case. Last month, the EPA extended the contract for one year, agreeing to pay $171,000 before cancellation. The contractor did not answer the question.
Mr Musk said that starting with his group’s work, the government will likely have to cancel some spending cuts.
“We need to act quickly to stop wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” Mr. Musk said. explain On the February “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “But if we make a mistake, we will turn it around quickly.”
But Mr. Musk also made a second promise, which is crucial to implementing the first one. He said his team will post details of its work online to enable the public to accurately, up-to-date on what it has cut.
“We can name details line by line,” Mr. Musk said in the same interview. “We have receipts. We publish receipts.”
Since its inception, The Times has found many mistakes on the group website. Often, these mistakes exaggerate the savings value achieved by Musk’s team. Mr Musk promised the group could cut its budget by $1 trillion this year, but so far it has been far from reaching that goal. Even these cuts are exaggerated even by including errors and guesses.
For example, Mr. Musk’s group previously claimed to have canceled plans that ended several years or even decades ago. It also carefully considered the same cancellation and had issued a claim that confuses “billion” and “million”.
This month, The Times sent a list of dozens of revival contracts to the White House that are still on the list. Two days later, Mr. Musk’s team deleted one: the EPA contract, which was cancelled for less than a day.
But at the same time, it added five more ongoing contracts to its “termination” list, claiming to announce that the credits had been withdrawn by $57 million in savings.
