How did POLITICO and NPR verify which DOGE contract cancellations were real savings?
Executive summary
POLITICO and NPR verified DOGE’s claimed contract-cancellation savings by matching the department’s public listings to independent federal procurement records and agency documentation, and by flagging missing identifiers, double-counting and preexisting terminations that inflated DOGE’s totals [1] [2]. Both outlets concluded that only a small fraction of DOGE’s headline savings could be traced to realistic, verifiable reductions in government spending, and they documented methodological gaps that made many of DOGE’s claims unverifiable [1] [2].
1. POLITICO’s approach: reconciling DOGE’s “wall of receipts” with agency records
POLITICO built its verification by taking the contracts DOGE publicly listed and attempting to reconcile the claimed dollar amounts with documentary evidence in federal procurement systems and agency records, finding that much of the $32.7 billion in DOGE‑listed contract claims could not be substantiated and that the portion POLITICO could verify amounted to roughly $1.4 billion — a fraction of DOGE’s headline figures [1]. In the process POLITICO identified specific problems: many DOGE entries lacked sufficient identifying information so reporters could not locate the underlying award; some savings figures duplicated the same award twice; and at least one large contract DOGE claimed to have canceled had already been terminated by the prior administration before DOGE took action [1].
2. NPR’s method: matching DOGE IDs and hyperlinks to FPDS and modification logs
NPR’s verification relied on programmatic matching of the unique award identifiers and hyperlinks DOGE published against the Federal Procurement Data System and lists of contract modifications, enabling NPR to estimate the maximum reasonably recoverable savings from the cancellations DOGE cited [3] [2]. NPR concluded that from recent batches of cancellations the maximum verifiable savings were just over $2.3 billion — and likely an overestimate because DOGE’s listings often emphasized ceiling values rather than what remained to be paid or what could legally be deobligated [2] [3].
3. Common flaws both outlets uncovered: missing IDs, overstated ceilings, and zero‑savings items
Both POLITICO and NPR reported that DOGE frequently posted cancellations without clear award identifiers, relied on the full contract ceiling rather than remaining unobligated balances, and included items that could not produce savings — for example, contracts already fully performed, grants already spent, or subscriptions already paid — meaning many cancellations “saved” nothing in practice [1] [2] [4]. Independent outlets including AP and TIME reached similar conclusions that a large share of DOGE’s reported cancellations were not expected to produce actual savings, using the department’s own published data as the starting point [4] [5].
4. How each outlet handled apples‑to‑apples valuation problems and legal constraints
POLITICO noted the technical ways the federal government actually realizes savings — congressional rescissions or agency deobligations — and checked whether DOGE’s entries corresponded to those legally meaningful steps; where they did not, POLITICO marked the entries as unverifiable or exaggerated [1]. NPR emphasized matching to FPDS modification records to calculate “maximum estimated savings” rather than accepting ceiling values, and highlighted that even those maxima were likely overstatements because they ignored already‑spent amounts and the complexities of obligational law [2] [3].
5. Limitations, unanswered questions and alternative perspectives
Both newsrooms were transparent about limits: many DOGE entries lacked public identifiers and DOGE declined to provide details for some large claimed savings — for example, a $312 million USAID cancellation DOGE would not identify due to litigation — leaving those items unverifiable [6] [1]. The White House and DOGE did not provide full explanations to NPR’s requests, a gap both outlets flagged as material to assessing the accuracy of the public totals [2]. DOGE’s supporters argue the program revealed previously opaque awards and that some political value accrues from dramatic numbers; POLITICO and NPR countered that transparency requires machine‑readable identifiers and reconciliations with official spending data to turn headlines into real fiscal savings [1] [2].