DOGE's savings page fixed old mistakes — and added new ones

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has made more inflated savings claims on its digital "wall of receipts."

Tuesday's update to the federal website included inaccurate data, according to an NPR review, even as the group corrected prior errors.

A day later, while speaking at President Trump's first Cabinet meeting, Musk spoke about the effort to reshape the federal government. He said anyone who questions DOGE's savings can look at the digital receipts for themselves.

"We won't be perfect," he said, "but when we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly."

The latest inaccurate data identified by NPR remained on the DOGE site, as of Friday morning.

The White House has not responded to multiple requests over the last two weeks to explain the DOGE savings process, why changes have been made to the data, or if they are concerned about an official government data source sharing inaccurate information.

The new numbers

DOGE's savings page launched with a topline claim of $55 billion saved, with "receipts" that accounted for about $16.5 billion in contract cancellations. But an NPR review found the documented savings were grossly overstated, including with an apparent $8 billion typo, the misleading inclusion of procurement methods that act as lines of credit and billions of dollars in contracts that were not actually terminated. By matching DOGE's claims with federal contract data, that NPR analysis found estimated savings of only about $2 billion — a fraction of what the receipts claimed or the higher, unverifiable claim of $55 billion overall.

In Tuesday's update, DOGE's new grand total is $65 billion saved. It's unclear how that tally was achieved. The site added almost 1,200 new "receipts" that claim to show another $4 billion in savings. But when NPR matched the claims to federal contracting data, the savings were essentially unchanged from the initial analysis, now about $2.3 billion.

DOGE deletes past mistakes

Since last week's launch, DOGE deleted more than $2.5 billion from its initial batch of savings claims. This includes an adjustment to a triple-counted U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) project worth up to $655 million, as highlighted by multiple media outlets. Savings from that USAID project are now listed as an estimated $18 million — less than 1% of the nearly $2 billion claimed at the tracker's launch.

Claims of a quarter billion saved from a Social Security contract that wasn't actually terminated are now updated to reflect a more modest $560,000 from ending the "Gender X" marker initiative, as noted by The Intercept.

Even the $8 billion typo in an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement contract worth $8 million was changed — again — to bring the savings down to zero.

Christopher Byrne, a retired senior government contracting officer who reviewed NPR's findings, said that data entry errors are inevitable, but DOGE's quiet changes reflect a "failure of due diligence" that likely comes from focusing on speed and volume over accuracy — and in turn misleading the public.

"I think it's worse that they're quietly revising after the fact and not telling people," he said. "Elon Musk has said, 'We're going to make errors, and we correct them,' but the soundbites are already out there, and people are buying into them, hook, line and sinker, without really understanding."

In all, the DOGE tracker now claims to have proof for $9.6 billion in savings garnered from terminating contracts. But for the second time in as many weeks, that math doesn't add up.

New data added, similar misleading math

This week, half of the $9.6 billion in alleged savings comes from contracts that did not appear to be canceled as of Tuesday — including $4 billion previously listed in the initial batch.

The largest new source of savings is related to a multi-year agreement worth up to $1.9 billion to update things like cybersecurity and project management for an Internal Revenue Service contract.

That proposal, which was officially canceled last week, is part of $2.5 billion in "savings" listed that comes from the counting — sometimes multiple times — of things like blanket purchase agreements and "indefinite delivery" contracts. Federal contracting experts say these types of contracts are misleading to include in a tally of savings because these methods act more as a line of credit for agencies to make purchases, instead of a maximum value that can be saved.

Those experts also say the projected savings will continue to decrease as the contracts are fully closed out because there are costs associated with terminating contracts early. Indeed, some of the verified savings from last week are lower now, as contracts are ended, the data shows.

That leaves a total of just over $2.3 billion in maximum estimated savings from cancellations in recent weeks that NPR verified by checking the Federal Procurement Data System, though even that number is likely an overstatement due to other errors in the DOGE data.

DOGE data woes

Several of the updated receipts link to the wrong contract data, like a Small Business Administration listing for a "Contract for expired Shuttered Venue Program" that instead linked to a BPA for research support. Neither one of those have been canceled.

A DOGE listing notes a National Institutes of Health cancellation for "human capital management and development support" worth $99 million in savings, but erroneously ties it to a still-ongoing $99 million contract for "bioinformatics and computational biology." A review of the federal contract database finds the actual NIH agreement that was canceled is $9.9 million, with less than a million dollars in estimated savings.

A Department of Health and Human Services contract for administrative assistants that was incorrectly listed in the first tranche of data was changed in this week's update to a different, incorrect amount. It now promotes a hypothetical savings of $150 million while incorrectly linked to a still active contract for $119,000 in refrigerated liquid gases instead of the actual agreement with a $1.4 million ceiling.

"If DOGE is to have any credibility, especially within the government community, they have to be accurate and understand what they're reporting," Byrne, the former contracting officer said. "They can't be flying by the seat of their pants."

Savings are dwarfed by what Congress is considering

Even if taken at face value, DOGE's claims of savings amount to less than 1% of what the federal government spent in the last fiscal year, and dwarfs the proposed $2 trillion in spending cuts in the GOP-led House framework approved Tuesday night — or the proposed $4 trillion increase to the nation's debt limit.

Aside from the contract cancellations, the DOGE website has begun to list "receipts" of terminated federal government leases, and ascribes its larger savings numbers to other efforts to trim the government, like mass firings of probationary employees. The administration is planning a much broader reduction of its workforce.

Several of DOGE's moves to reshape the federal government, such as the terminations of probationary workers, are before the courts, as questions about the power and role of DOGE and Musk continue beyond the first month of the new Trump administration.
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