Judd Legum, founder of ThinkProgress, a now defunct blog, is what happens when the journalistic honesty of Aaron Rupar is crossed with the sane balance of Keith Olbermann.
Our story begins in the middle with Legum's appeal to authority in an attempt to win an argument with Data Republican. As with many assertions made by Legum over the years, it's light on facts and heavy on assertion.
Sorry but “Oilfields Rando” is not an expert. I spoke with several top former OMB officials and others with actual experience. The idea that the government exercises every option on every contact is absolutely false. Your own description of how you queried the data shows a lack…
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 13, 2025
If you're not following DataRepublican, stop reading this, go back to Twitter and give her a follow. We'll wait.
Data Republican has done incredible work uncovering government malfeasance using her deep knowledge of AI and software in general. So naturally, the attack-dogs have it in for her.
It all began with a thread from Legum stating how the DOGE website is 'garbage'.
1. The DOGE website is garbage. The claimed savings has no relationship to the data provided.
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 12, 2025
And the data that is provided grossly inflates the savings from each canceled contract.
So we just launched our own site — the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker — that breaks everything… pic.twitter.com/beVYFVKbI9
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The crux of his argument is that DOGE counts the full amount of a grant and that it doesn't factor in cases when the recipient doesn't choose to collect the full amount and not the current award amount.
It's better to let Data Republican herself to explain.
Hello Mr. Legum,
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) March 13, 2025
You’ve built a website that relies on a specific interpretation of “potential” in the context of federal spending it. While @Oilfield_Rando mentioned this earlier, I went a step further and confirmed these definitions myself.
In the USASpending… pic.twitter.com/MrkOX0RuE1
The rest of the Tweet.
In the USASpending rpt.awards_search table, larger federal contracts often specify two key fields:
ordering_period_end_date (labeled as the “Potential End Date”)
base_and_all_options_value (labeled as the “Potential Award Value”)
Contrary to everyday usage of “potential” (which implies something uncertain or unlikely as your website suggests), “Potential Award Value” in these databases represents a contract’s maximum cost if all negotiated options are exercised. It is not a mere “possibility”; it’s the upper bound of contractual spending authority. And in practice, contractors squeeze these agreements to their fullest extent, because why would they give up money? To prove this point, I ran a SQL query to extract the first 60,000 contracts expiring in 2024 with outlays over $1 million and with no ordering period extending beyond 2024. Out of these awards, zero contracts had an outlay less than its Potential Award Value, and the vast majority vastly exceeded their Current Award Amount.
So, yes, I concur with @Oilfield_Rando - @DOGE, if anything, is underestimating their own savings.
Oh, and by the way, Oilfield Rando is another amazing account that does the hard work of digging into government waste before DOGE was even a thing.
Hey! Speaking of.
Juddle. Bubby. Stick to liberal arts shit and leave spending analysis to STEM people.
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) March 12, 2025
If anything, DOGE is underestimating savings because of interest on money that would be borrowed for all this spending. https://t.co/Jrbw1P4WTu
We love the 'Die Hard' reference.
So anyway, all that leads us back to the first Tweet regarding Judd's unnamed 'former OMB officials' who told him that government doesn't exercise every option available to them.
shouldn't you spend your time tracking the criminals that stole from Americans? instead of attacking those exposing the criminals?
— pebbles (@jbamban) March 12, 2025
Well, you see, Legum is reflexively on the side of the government waste because Democrats are on the side of government waste. Blind partisanship is the surefire sign of intelligence and integrity.
Cool, they saved at least $9B less than 2 months in.
— Darwin's Money (@EverydayFinance) March 12, 2025
Good point. Even if overstated (we doubt it), it's savings.
How often does the US government utilize it's "use it or lose it" rules?
— Freedom Ninja (@FreedomNinja4) March 13, 2025
In short, agencies aim to obligate nearly 100% of their budgets every year—e.g., 97% in FY 2022—making this a routine practice across the government.
Explain.
.
This author has observed this in real life. It is absolutely a thing and you'd be naive or intentionally deceiving yourself to think it isn't.
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