Did you look through that page before posting it? Currently, the default list of biggest savings is topped by things like eliminating a refugee intake facility, various HHS programs making sure public housing meets basic standards of habitability, and eradicating polio.

Is the argument that government was so efficient before that eliminating these seemingly useful programs was the best and only way to save taxpayer dollars?

I guess we just disagree on what's important. $2.9B for 3,000 children. That's 967K per child. What in the actual fuck? https://www.fpds.gov/common/jsp/LaunchWebPage.jsp?command=ex...

Edit: the contract was 3.3B, so that changes the calculus to 1,109,966.78 per child. Haven't seen the facility, but i highly doubt they are staying in million dollar condos, but if they are... there are better ways to do that.

$1,136,436,294.65 for paying their legal services... Why are we paying a billion dollars for legal services of a program we have discontinued?

1,021,000,000 to eradicate polio... Of which that last case in the united states was in 2022... Polio is all but irradicated here in the united states.

We just seem to disagree with what's important and what's wasteful. You could build a brand new city for those amounts in the private sector.

> there are better ways to do that.

That's the crux, for sure. The problem with DOGE though is that instead of creating better ways of doing anything, they just seem to eliminate doing those things at all.

Now we not only don't have a better way of doing a thing that might have been necessary, but we don't even have the sub-optimal way of doing that thing, so now it's not getting done at all.

Edit: Bringing it back to the article, if a person with access to 'a "core financial management system" belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency' was foolish enough to let their system get hacked, are we really finding a better way to do things, or are we being a little too careless?

It's 2.9B for a facility that can accommodate up to 3000 children simultaneously, as well as the support services to run it and provide the medical care and social workers needed to take care of them. It's not $3B for a specific 3000 children somewhere, so it's nonsense to try counting the cost per child that way.

regardless of the KPI perspective, do you agree that $3.3B is a bit much for a facility that can only host up the 3k?

For reference, look up some of the Giga factory costs (With Capital expenditure for production). They are similiar in expenditures.

I haven't looked at the contract in detail, but no, $3B over 5 years for 3000 people including construction costs sounds reasonably in line with prison costs (the closest comparison). Certainly not the order of magnitude too high like you're suggesting, which surely someone would have undercut on the bid if it were easy.

You can look at the bid requirements yourself and determine whether you think it's reasonable for the scope of the facility: https://sam.gov/opp/3726d9e2246c47e197396e805ce6bb33/view

This was awarded sole source. There were no vendors able to compete.

I also find their J&A unconvincing, and there's no way it passes the smell test required in Far part 6.

There was really no other vendor in the world, besides Family Care to be able to do this? They aren't even a construction company.

Wow, I took a look at the first one: ~$3 Billion for temporary shelter for just 3k kids? Almost $1 million per child??

Never heard of the program but on its face that sounds pretty bad. Grift, scam, or just inefficient govt? Not sure but not a good argument for keeping it around!

You can't trust their claimed savings either. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/us/politics/doge-contract...

show me an example? Go to the link i provided and show me where they misrepresented savings. You can go directly to FPDS-NG from their saving reports.

NYT is a trash media outlet, which obviously leans everything anti-elon.