The Pentagon is cutting IT and consulting contracts totaling $5.1 billion as part of the Trump Administration’s effort to decrease government spending. Directed by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the budget cuts target major consulting firms Accenture and Deloitte in a move that Hegseth said will cut “wasteful spending.”
Scheduled to be cut is an Air Force contract with Accenture to re-sell third-party enterprise IT cloud services. The services will still be performed, but now the government will leverage “existing procurement resources,” Hegseth said in a Defense Department memo. The cuts in enterprise IT cloud service will reduce expenses by $1.4 billion, he claimed.
Similarly, Hegseth announced he is slashing the budget “for consulting services from Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen, and other firms that can be performed by our civilian workforce.” The consulting cuts will save the government $1.8 billion, he said. Also targeted is an IT help desk contract given to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) currently costing $500 million, which Hegseth claimed is “completely duplicative” of services already provided by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
He has also decided to cut a $500 million Navy contract for business process consulting in the administrative office of the Bureau of Medicine. As he noted in a video on X, “again, lots of process…that’s a lot of consulting,” making it clear that these items were a waste. “We need this money to spend on better health care for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant.”
As he perused budget line items, Hegseth focused intently on diversity and inclusion efforts. “We are committed to rooting out DEI — root and branch — throughout this department …[And] I’m going to keep looking,” he said. At his directive, the Department of Defense is cutting 11 contracts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change, and COVID-19 response.
These cost-cutting measures are driving significant job cuts. The Pentagon is working to lower the department’s headcount by some 50,000 to 60,000 jobs, or about 5 to 8% of its civilian workforce.
“If you’re keeping score at home, today’s cuts bring our running total to nearly $6 billion in wasteful spending over the first six weeks of the Department of Government Efficiency effort here at the Defense Department,” Hegseth said.
Given that the Department of Defense has requested a budget of $850 billion for fiscal year 2025, Hegseth’s trim of $6 billion is less than one percent. And it may in fact be less. A Defense Department document states that the 2025 budget “includes $1.3 billion in support of the DoD audit.” So the expense of the audit itself appears to have consumed 25% of any presumed savings.
The DOGE cost cutting effort, directed by Elon Musk, has led to thousands of layoffs across numerous federal agencies. These include plans for 10,000 job cuts at the Department of Health Human Services, the elimination of 1,000 scientists and other staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency and more than 1,300 workers cut from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
As of April 13, DOGE claims its efforts have saved the federal government an estimated $150 billion. Data analyst Brian, who built and runs the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker, indicates the verifiably cancelled amount is $11.7 billion.
