CNN host Abby Phillip dismissed savings found by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as “a rounding error” in the federal budget Tuesday night.
President Donald Trump established DOGE in a Jan. 20 executive order and added additional responsibilities regarding government employees to the agency with a Feb. 11 order. Phillip claimed the panel had only found $16 billion in savings before asserting that amount had been overstated.
“I mean, I’m just telling you the facts are — okay, DOGE says that they have cut about $16 billion, which is a rounding error in the federal government’s budget,” Phillip said. “But of that 16 billion, they claim they saved 8 billion — this is according to The New York Times — 8 billion on a single contract. Turns out it wasn’t 8 billion. It was 8 million. So we’re talking pennies here. In the scale of the $6 trillion federal budget, it’s pennies.”
According to the DOGE website, $55 billion in cuts have been identified, a figure over two times larger than the amount Phillip told CNN. The site states that the savings come from “a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes and regulatory savings.”
Phillip then noted Trump’s promises about tax cuts and the upcoming legislation.
“There is going to be a tax bill. There’s going to be a budget put forward. And it’s going to add trillions in spending. So where is DOGE actually making a difference? Or are they just cutting things that ideologically don’t fit?” Phillip asked, prompting former Burgum presidential campaign spokesperson Lance Trover to respond.
READ: Elon Musk Says DOGE ‘Must Be Over Target’ If Dems Are Losing Their Minds Over Cuts
“I don‘t think there was ever a promise made that we‘re going to pay for a tax cut bill with what DOGE did or what they‘re doing. That was never —” Trover said before Phillip interrupted, saying, “I thought Elon said he was going to cut $2 trillion.”
In a Monday post on X, Musk said he was “100% certain” that the “magnitude” of waste in entitlement programs would be greater than “every private scam” Americans had heard of.
Trump appointed Leland Dudek, the head of the Social Security Administration’s anti-fraud office, as acting head of the agency after Michelle King resigned following a clash with DOGE.
“We’re one month in. We’re one month in,” criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala said. “We’re not even one month in, right? It’s not even, it’s not even February 21st. So, you know, like, it’s 28 days. It’s four weeks.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
