from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, March 10th.

NPR Stephen Fowler is with us. He's a political reporter with NPR's Washington desk,

where he currently reports

on the restructuring of the federal government and the future of the Democratic and Republican

parties after Donald Trump's return to office. For his reporting the last few weeks,

I'll call him our lead Doge receipts correspondent because he's revealed eye-poppingly big differences in what they

claim to be saving the American public and what their published receipts actually show.

Stephen, thanks for your reporting and thanks for coming on WNYC with us today in addition to

your network appearances that air on all the NPR stations. Welcome to our show.

Thanks for having me.

You first grabbed my attention, I want to say, a few weeks ago now, when I heard

you reporting on NPR that Doge's savings page launched with a top line claim of $55 billion

saved, but your review found estimated savings of only about $2 billion,

a fraction of what the receipts even claimed, and of course a very small fraction of the

unverifiable claim of $55 billion overall, as you reported.

So let's go through some of that.

I'm sure our listeners would like to know,

especially because of all the sound and fury and confusion around all this. So one line at a time,

where did the $55 billion in savings claim come from? Well, the top line number basically

amounts to a trust me. The Department of Government Efficiency has this savings website,

and they have this estimated savings that they say is a combination of everything from contract

cancellations, lease terminations, asset sales, fraud and improper payment deletion,

...