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Here's 1 More Reason Why You Shouldn't Trust DOGE's 'Wall Of Receipts'
Are federal workers in Buffalo losing their office, or is Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" claiming savings it isn't responsible for?
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A line item from the Department of Government Efficiency’s “Wall of Receipts” sparked alarm inside a federal agency this week and raised new questions about the shaky accounting behind Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts.
Employees at the National Labor Relations Board office in Buffalo, New York, were shocked to see on the DOGE site Wednesday that their office lease was set to be canceled.
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The site, which purports to tally up the dollar value of the layoffs, asset sales and contract cancellations since Donald Trump took office, listed $1 million in annual savings due to “true termination-consolidation” of the Buffalo lease.
The NLRB investigates and prosecutes unfair labor practices committed by employers and unions, and many workers file charges in person or show up seeking advice on their rights. The office also includes a courtroom where labor trials are held, and space for the board’s attorneys to prepare witnesses for hearings.
After seeing their office among DOGE’s cuts, the board’s Buffalo employees wondered whether they would have a physical space to work out of and how they would serve the workers who rely on them.
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“There’s so little information,” one Buffalo employee told HuffPost, asking to speak anonymously for fear of retribution. “It’s definitely possible they’re claiming they saved money without actually doing anything.”
The NLRB’s staff union was told Wednesday that employees would have to be out of the office within 90 days. But then the union received conflicting news on Thursday: that the Buffalo workers were being moved into a smaller office in the same building, under a plan that was put in place while Joe Biden was still in the White House.
In other words, the big pile of savings claimed by DOGE might be little more than an accounting trick.
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“It’s definitely possible they’re claiming they saved money without actually doing anything.”
- NLRB employee
An NLRB spokesperson said the agency couldn’t provide any clarity on Thursday when asked if the lease was being canceled and whether there would still be a Buffalo office.
“We are looking into this and do not have any concrete information to provide,” an NLRB spokesperson said in an email.
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The White House did not respond Thursday when asked for details on the situation.
The office drama in Buffalo illustrates the broader confusion and disorder as the Trump administration and DOGE carry out mass firings, try to shut down agencies unilaterally and look to cut federal contracts. It also underscores the glaring conflicts of interest at play in DOGE’s mission: Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is being prosecuted by the NLRB for allegedly breaking the law by firing employees who’d criticized him.
Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.), ranking Democrat on the House labor committee, said terminating the lease “could potentially result in no savings and instead generate waste as the government scrambles to find a new office space.”
“This demands an immediate public explanation from Elon Musk,” Scott said in a statement to HuffPost, adding that he was also concerned about what it could mean for workers trying to form unions.
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The board employee in Buffalo said they had expected to be moved into a smaller office in the same building by the end of the year, to better match what’s become a smaller staff through attrition in recent years. Around eight employees work out of the Buffalo office.
Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company is fighting the NLRB in court, has apparently DOGE'd the agency's Buffalo office.Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
“We are already reducing down to the smallest size possible,” the employee said of the space they were expected to move into later this year.
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The DOGE site lists the office being eliminated as taking up 37,000 square feet. But the staff union says the square footage is actually 10,296. The office they were expected to move into later this year is a little over 4,000, according to the union.
If DOGE inflated the square footage or the potential savings, that wouldn’t be the first error on its ledger. The New York Times found that what had been the site’s largest line item for savings — an $8 billion contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — was actually just $8 million. DOGE claims to have saved the government $55 billion so far as of Thursday morning.
The Buffalo building, known as the Niagara Center, is owned by Easterly Government Properties, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate investment firm. Easterly’s CEO, Darrell Crate, is a former chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party. He said in a statement earlier this month that he was looking forward to helping DOGE find costs to cut, including by modifying the GSA’s lease structure.
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“The DOGE site lists the office being eliminated as 37,000 square feet. But the staff union says the square footage is actually 10,296.”
Asked if the NLRB was still being moved into a smaller office, the spokesperson for the company said it couldn’t “share specifics on an active procurement process.”
“Easterly is excited to continue working alongside DOGE to deliver cost effective real estate solutions for the federal government,” a spokesperson said in an email. “With the Trump Administration’s return-to-office mandate, we anticipate our facility will serve as a helpful solution for the government as demand for office space in Western New York continues to grow.”
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Mike Bilik, executive vice president for the National Labor Relations Board Union, which represents agency employees, said the board would not be able to fulfill its mission without a space to work in Buffalo.
He said it would prevent the agency from holding in-person trials and leave staff without a place to process and store ballots from in-person and mail-in union elections. (Democrats have tried for years to enable electronic elections at the NLRB, but congressional Republicans have blocked them from doing so.)
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Perhaps the biggest problem, Bilik said, would be leaving workers without a place to walk in and assert their rights under the law.
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“It would just cause chaos,” he said.
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