DOE’s Science Office Held 4% of IRA Funding but Made 56% of Payments

A small funding share dominates the cash paid out

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science received $1.55 billion of the $35.53 billion in Inflation Reduction Act budget authority displayed in a newly released federal review. Yet it accounted for $1.31 billion of the $2.33 billion disbursed. What’s the Scoop With Broach calculated that the office held 4.4% of the table’s original authority but produced 56.2% of its payments.

That concentration matters when interpreting department-wide spending totals. Removing the Office of Science from both the obligation and disbursement columns leaves approximately $19.25 billion obligated and $1.02 billion paid out across the remaining offices. Their combined disbursements equaled 5.3% of obligations, compared with 84.5% for Science. These are newsroom calculations from Table 2 of GAO-26-109087, not performance grades assigned by GAO.

The denominator changes the apparent spending rate

The table also records $13.47 billion in rescissions—withdrawals of budget authority. Subtracting those rescissions from the original $35.53 billion leaves about $22.06 billion. Against that post-rescission amount, the $2.33 billion disbursed represents 10.6%. Against obligations, it represents 11.2%; against original authority, 6.6%. A percentage without its denominator can make the same cash movement appear larger or smaller.

The Office of Science has no rescission amount in the table. By contrast, Energy Dominance Financing accounts for $9.71 billion in rescissions and the Grid Deployment Office for $2.43 billion. Those two lines together account for about 90.1% of the table’s rescissions. That is a second concentration, involving canceled authority rather than cash already paid.

A funding snapshot and an award review have different dates

GAO dated the report September 17, 2026, and released it publicly September 24. Its financial tables describe the position on September 30, 2025. They exclude authority whose entire availability period begins after that date. They must not be presented as an October 2026 cash balance or as the complete lifetime cost of the law.

The report separately describes DOE’s award review, completed in April 2026: the agency reported allowing 381 awards worth $19.6 billion to continue and canceling 155 worth $9.1 billion. Those later award decisions cover both infrastructure-law and IRA funding. They are not interchangeable with Table 2’s IRA-only, September 2025 accounting categories, and this analysis does not subtract those award amounts from the earlier table.

What the concentration establishes—and what it cannot

The public-interest question is whether a department-wide payment total describes the experience of most funded offices. This comparison shows that it does not: one office with a small initial allocation supplies a majority of the disbursements. It establishes the distribution of cash paid in this record, not why individual programs moved at different speeds.

Obligations are commitments; disbursements are payments. Programs can have different award schedules, construction milestones and payment requirements. A low disbursement-to-obligation ratio alone is not proof of waste, unlawful withholding or failure to complete a project. DOE had no comments on GAO’s draft report; that is the response documented by GAO, not a response to this publication.

For this original records analysis, the newsroom transcribed Table 2, calculated shares and the all-other-offices residual, and checked the report’s definitions, scope and distinct review dates. Displayed amounts are rounded to hundredths of a billion, so derived ratios are approximate. No recipients were interviewed, and no subsequent agency cash ledger was independently obtained.