The following is a lightly edited transcript of a public-affairs radio interview conducted with a Government Accountability Office official following the release of the agency’s long-awaited DOGE savings report. The official’s name has been withheld at their request, on the grounds that they would like to keep working.
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HOST: Your office released its findings this week. The headline number is $110 billion in taxpayer savings.
GAO OFFICIAL: That’s correct. One hundred and ten billion dollars.
HOST: And the underlying figure your auditors actually verified was —
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GAO OFFICIAL: Twelve dollars and ninety-four cents.
HOST: Twelve ninety-four.
GAO OFFICIAL: Rounded up.
HOST: Rounded up to a hundred and ten billion.
GAO OFFICIAL: We use standard federal rounding conventions. You round to the nearest significant figure. In this case there weren’t any, so we went with the nearest figure that seemed significant.
HOST: That’s not — I don’t think that’s how significant figures work.
GAO OFFICIAL: It’s how they work here.
The $12.94
HOST: Walk me through the twelve ninety-four. Where does that come from?
GAO OFFICIAL: A canceled subscription. A stock photo service. One seat, monthly, auto-renewing since 2011. Somebody at the Department of Commerce used it once to find a picture of a handshake.
HOST: And that’s the entirety of the verified savings.
GAO OFFICIAL: That’s the entirety of what survived audit, yes. Everything else was either double-counted, triple-counted, counted as savings and simultaneously as revenue, or was a contract that had already expired in 2019 and was canceled again for effect. One line item was a lease on a building that does not exist. Not “no longer exists.” Was never built. Someone canceled a hypothetical.
HOST: How much was that one worth?
GAO OFFICIAL: Eight billion dollars, per them. Zero dollars, per the concept of buildings.
Methodology
HOST: So why publish $110 billion at all? Why not publish $12.94?
GAO OFFICIAL: We tried. The number tested very poorly. We ran it past communications and they came back and said a twelve-dollar figure reads as sarcastic, and GAO does not do sarcasm. We are a nonpartisan agency. We are congenitally incapable of a bit.
HOST: But a hundred and ten billion isn’t sarcastic, it’s —
GAO OFFICIAL: It’s aspirational. It’s a stretch goal. It’s the number the twelve ninety-four could grow into with the right mentorship.
HOST: Did anyone in the building object?
GAO OFFICIAL: One of our senior analysts stood up in the conference room, said the word “no” eleven times, and went out to her car. She’s still out there. We bring her lunch. She’s fine, she just prefers the car now.
The Efficiency Question
HOST: The stated premise was that government is bloated and needs a founder’s touch. Outsider energy. Move fast, break things.
GAO OFFICIAL: Right, and they did move fast and they did break things. Nobody disputes the second half. What we found is that the efficiency initiative cost approximately $340 million to run — offices, contractors, an AI system that flagged the word “gender” in a soil report and recommended eliminating dirt — in order to identify twelve dollars and ninety-four cents in redundant spending.
HOST: So it lost money.
GAO OFFICIAL: Catastrophically. But that’s a return on investment question and we were only asked about savings. If you ask a narrow enough question you can get a beautiful answer.
HOST: Last thing. Where is the $12.94 now?
GAO OFFICIAL: It went back to Treasury. It’s in the general fund. It’s mixed in with everything. It’s gone, functionally. You couldn’t find it again with a warrant.
HOST: And the stock photo service?
GAO OFFICIAL: Commerce resubscribed in March. Different card. Different department. Nobody noticed for six weeks.
HOST: So the savings are —
GAO OFFICIAL: Zero. The savings are zero dollars. Round that however you like.