By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-03-20 22:41:21 | Updated at 2025-03-21 15:15:55
16 hours ago
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled another round of cuts to programs Thursday worth $580 million that he claimed were either “wasteful” or didn’t align with the administration’s agenda.
With those cuts, Hegseth estimated that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has found roughly $800 million in savings so far at the Pentagon.
“They are not a good use of taxpayer dollars — ultimately that’s who funds us and we owe you transparency and make sure we’re using it well,” Hegseth explained in an X video while briefly ticking through a few of the savings.
One of the cuts he listed was “an HR software effort” that went more than $280 million over budget and seven years behind schedule. The program was initially supposed to take one year to complete and cost $36 million, according to Hegseth.
The secretary also claimed that some $360 million in expenditures were excised from the Navy budget.
Among these were grants to decarbonize missions undertaken by Navy ships, a $5.2 million diversity initiative “to engage BIPOC students and scholars” and about $9 million to help a university he declined to name find students of color to support “equitable AI and machine-learning models.”
“I need lethal machine-learning models, not equitable machine-learning models,” Hegseth quipped in the video.
Also cut was $30 million in external consulting costs with Gartner and McKinsey for unused licenses and technology-related expenses, according to Hegseth.
“They’re working hard, we’re working hard with them, Hegseth said of DOGE. “And we have a lot more coming.”
Hegseth has been a staunch supporter of Elon Musk’s DOGE effort to find cost savings across the vast federal bureaucracy.
Before getting sworn in as the boss of the Pentagon, Hegseth pledged to work towards ensuring that the Department of Defense could pass an audit.
Last year, the DoD failed its seventh audit in a row.
The Pentagon oversees the largest budget of any federal department, with Congress allocating $825 billion for the military last fiscal year.
DoD has over 2 million employees.
Hegseth did not delve into more specifics about the $580 million in cuts he claimed to have made as part of his collaboration with DOGE.
Earlier this month amid reported friction between Musk and department and agency heads, President Trump announced that cabinet officials would be taking more of a leading role in personnel decisions.
DOGE claims to have saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars so far.
