DOGE Orders Labor Agency to ‘Defend the Spend,’ Slowing Grants

US Department of Labor grantees now must take an extra step to tap into promised funding due to a new Department of Government Efficiency initiative, a paperwork exercise that former agency officials say is slowing the flow of money to training and apprenticeship programs.

The effort dubbed “Defend the Spend” started in April, according to two current DOL employees, and requires that both grant officers and awardees provide a one-sentence explanation every time they draw down funds from the agency’s payment system. That explanation will then be shared publicly on DOGE’s website.

The added disclosure is the latest extension of President Donald Trump’s “Cost Efficiency Initiative” across the federal government, which has canceled multiple agency grants, closed dozens of agency offices, and cut staff.

The additional paperwork requirement is unnecessary and will slow down the process for getting funding to programs that help veterans return to work, provide career and training services to students, and expand access to apprenticeships, one current and one former DOL staffer, as well as a group that advocates for the expansion of job training programs, said.

“While I think we can all appreciate the desire to make sure money is spent appropriately, the danger here is that we’re just gumming up the works,” said John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, which advocates for the growth of job training programs in the US economy. “The whole reason to make a grant is, presumably, to get some level of public purpose out of it. And if you are consuming all your resources on administrative actions and not on those public purposes, then what are we doing here?”

DOGE’s track record of naming and shaming grant programs it deems wasteful could also subject recipients to targeting or harassment, current and former DOL staffers said. But some agree that the disclosure could provide clarity in how the government awards grants.

“While I love the publication of expenses,” said Nick Beadle, a consultant who formerly worked as a program and grants attorney at the DOL. “I worry about grantees being harassed over legitimate expenses that caught the eye of someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

For example, someone “who doesn’t understand that a construction training program isn’t just teaching people to use hammer and nails and thinks something is up when a grantee buys a pile of iPads for training,” Beadle said.

The DOL didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cost Efficiency

Trump demanded the new disclosure requirement in a Feb. 26 executive order outlining a government-wide“Cost Efficiency Initiative.” Trump instructed agencies, with assistance from DOGE, to record “a brief, written justification for each payment submitted by the agency employee who approved the payment” under their contracts and grants.

“This system shall include a mechanism for the Agency Head to pause and rapidly review any payment for which the approving employee has not submitted a brief, written justification within the technological system,” the EO said.

When an organization, business, community college, or union receives a grant award from the DOL, the funding is not dispersed in one lump sum. Awardees draw down their expenditures through a processor called the federal payment management system. The frequency of these transactions can depend on grant type and who receives the award.

The Employment and Training Administration will likely be hit the hardest by the new DOGE requirement. The agency administers roughly 3,000 grant programs and it’s not uncommon for grant recipients to receive payments monthly.

It’s “not a great use of time to subject every single expenditure to these levels of review,” Colborn said. Recipients of funding are already required to map out their plans for the cash through budget documents both when applying for the program and throughout the process.

Grant programs can also have differing expenses based on their goals. The Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grant program provides funding for actual training as well as support services, like child care and transportation needs. Meanwhile the Pathways Home grant program allows a limited amount of funds to be used for emergency assistance for housing or substance abuse and mental-health treatment.

Services like these could receive “unfair attention” if they are misunderstood by those scraping the DOGE website for potential “illegal” spending.

“For example, the WANTO program can pay for debit cards so participants don’t have to worry about food or gas—it’s vital to the success of the program,” Beadle said. For example, he said someone could argue that they’re paying women workers for diversity, equity, and inclusion, “or forcing counterproductive restrictions to programs based on misunderstandings.”