Dem
47
GOP
53
Why did it take so long? With one of the co-presidents a stable genius and the other an unstable "genious," they should have figured this out long ago: Make sure all the cuts the DOGEys are implementing are in blue districts and states. It is kind of the inverse of the old spoils system, where the president's friends got government goodies. In the new version, the president's enemies get all the punishments. It doesn't take a genius of either type to figure this out.
An investigation showed that only about 12% of the contracts cut by the DOGEys are in Republican districts. The Muskrats have enough data to figure out where to cut. About 7,200 contracts were terminated, totaling billions of dollars. The overwhelming numbers were in blue districts. Here is the top of the list:
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) took the biggest hit. His district, VA-08, contains the Pentagon, the CIA and Northrop Grumman. It is 49% white, 21% Latino, 12% Black and 12% Asian. It has a median household income of $125,000—that is, it is a very wealthy mixed-suburban district. Oh, and the PVI is D+26. In addition to saving money, punishing rich white, Black, and Latino Democrats is a delicious plus.
Part of the reason blue districts are being hit harder than red ones is that if a red district is hit, the congresscritter who represents it tells Trump and he most likely orders Elon Musk to leave that one alone. Some members of the House have even bragged that Musk killed a contract in their districts, then they made a direct appeal to Musk (or Trump) and the contract wasn't canceled. That doesn't work for Democrats, though.
It is also important to keep in mind that the claimed savings aren't always real. In many cases, a contract, especially a military one, puts an upper limit on the amount that the contractor can charge, but the contractor has to justify every penny actually spent. For contracts that are ongoing, some of the money hasn't been spent yet and might never be, so claiming the maximum was saved is somewhat misleading.
And again, technically, what Musk is doing is impounding federal funds. That is illegal due to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), whose district in nearby Maryland is #3 on the list above, said: "The money that we have appropriated in Congress is all part of federal laws, and the president has the obligation to spend the money that we've appropriated for particular purposes. You can't take money away from the State Department or the Defense Department or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or [US]AID as president because you don't like it."
Musk removes (and sometimes puts back) dozens or more contracts per day. Last Sunday and Monday combined, he unilaterally killed 200 contracts on which he claimed a savings of half a billion dollars. Needless to say, he never read any of the contracts and has no idea if any of them have any waste, fraud, or abuse. He just didn't like that particular agency or the contractor.
Rachael Bade of Politico is reporting that Trump is telling people in his inner circle that Musk is on his way out. Trump may have come to believe one of two things. Either Co-President Musk has come to overshadow Trump or Musk is so unpopular it is rubbing off on Trump. Whether Musk will retain any role after he is gone remains to be seen. (V)