[PaywallBuster]

0.61% with just a few contracts

[josephg]

It might be a small percentage of the pentagon’s budget. But it’s still $5.1bn of taxpayer money being reigned in here. It’s $13 per person in the country. You could do an awful lot of good with that kind of money - from space programs to science funding.

[dagw]

But it’s still $5.1bn of taxpayer money being reigned in here

That's assuming that all those consultants were not providing any value and that they don't need to be replaced by hiring more staff.

[shusson]

What if they are providing negative value?

[pavel_lishin]

> You could do an awful lot of good with that kind of money - from space programs to science funding.

We sure could.

Will we?

[r00fus]

DOGE is involved - do you think anything is going back to useful programs? More likely they'll just buy more SpaceX and Tesla.

[cma]

The article doesn't say the length of the contract or really anything about what it was for.

[pjc50]

> from space programs to science funding.

... which have also been randomly cut.

[jghn]

> You could do an awful lot of good with that kind of money

Or given to billionaires

[3D30497420]

Exactly. Most of these "savings" will be fed into significant tax cuts that are almost certainly going to benefit the rich more than anyone else.

[ajross]

Those are surely the total contract sizes, not yearly billing.

[supplied_demand]

Were these one-year contracts?

[btucker]

I'm sure PaywallBuster has reviewed these and confirmed they were one-year spending before making their statement.