WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced an additional $5.1 billion worth of expenditure cuts in the Defense Department.
Hegseth on Thursday signed a memorandum announcing the spending cuts in wasteful Defense Department contracts.
'That's with a 'B'; $5.1 billion in DOD contracts for ancillary things like consulting and other nonessential services,' Hegseth said while recording a video of the announcement from his office.
The memo lists some of the cuts, including $1.8 billion in consulting contracts the Defense Health Agency awarded to various private sector firms, a $1.4 billion enterprise cloud IT services contract awarded to a software reseller, and a $500 million Navy contract for business process consulting.
Reports said thst the consulting firms included companies such as Accenture and Deloitte.
'We need this money to spend on better health care for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant,' Hegseth said. 'That's a lot of consulting.'
He also mentioned cutting a $500 million contract awarded to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for IT help desk services that are 'completely duplicative' of services that the Defense Information Systems Agency already provides.
Additionally, Hegseth said the department is cutting 11 contracts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change, the department's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related nonessential activities across DOD.
He also announced cuts on the academic front, saying that DOD would be pausing more than $500 million in funding to a pair of universities that 'tolerate antisemitism and support divisive DEI programs.' This is in addition to the $70 million already cut in funding at three other colleges in the past weeks.
Hegseth had announced in March that the department would be cutting $580 million in programs, contracts and grants.
'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, adding that DOGE's job is to find wasteful spending at DOD so that the funds can be driven back into the department's warfighting capabilities.
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