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The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly deleted its five biggest cited “savings” from its website’s “wall of receipts” after multiple media investigations pointed out a series of serious errors.
The “wall of receipts,” the list of government savings following the Elon Musk-led cost-cutting efforts like staff cuts and contract terminations, is the “only public ledger [DOGE] has produced to document its work,” reported The New York Times , which noted it was “riddled with mistakes.”
The mistakes included major accounting errors, incorrect assumptions and outdated data; some contracts closed and claimed as savings by DOGE actually ended during the Biden administration, the newspaper noted.
DOGE’s estimated savings in the amended “receipts” were $65 billion as of Tuesday — a $10 billion increase from Friday, despite the fact that the list no longer includes the top five savings, the Times reported. Records provided accounted for a fraction of the amount claimed.
“President Trump promised the American people he would establish a Department of Government Efficiency, overseen by Elon Musk, to make the federal government more efficient and accountable to taxpayers,” Karoline Leavitt said in a statement concerning the controversy provided to The Independent.
“Rogue bureaucrats and activist judges attempting to undermine this effort are only subverting the will of the American people. DOGE has already identified billions of dollars in savings for American taxpayers, and President Trump will continue to direct this effort until our government is truly for the people, and by the people,” she added.
Leavitt did not address any of the DOGE errors.
The largest point of savings initially cited in the “wall of receipts” allegedly stemmed from cutting an $8 billion contract at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The contract in question in fact was $8 million, the Times reported.
In the wake of the article, Musk wrote on X that the Times’ reporting was “inaccurate,” and claimed the number was initially incorrectly noted by the agency, but was corrected by DOGE last month.
DOGE acknowledged that its initial itemized “receipts” only showed a fraction — $16.6 billion — of the $55 billion in savings it claimed then. The Times noted, however, that even that fraction could “not be reconciled” with the numbers DOGE provided. The new list only itemizes deductions for $9.6 billion, even though claimed savings have soared by $10 billion.
Some critics have surmised that Musk’s young band of techies recently out of college don’t understand the contract system or even basic bookkeeping.
Among DOGE’s other earlier mistakes, it counted one USAID contract three times, CBS News reported.
In another finding, DOGE claimed it had saved $232 million by canceling an IT contract for the Social Security Administration, The Intercept reported. In reality, the cost-cutting agency only cut a fraction of it: $560,000.
The Wall Street Journal found that over one-quarter of the contracts mentioned by DOGE as being cut had already been paid.
The White House revealed Tuesday that Amy Gleason had been tapped to lead the U.S. DOGE Service.
