A Closer Look
The White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, has been documenting its cost-saving efforts on a "wall of receipts" on its website. However, a closer look reveals some discrepancies and adjustments in the reported figures.
Initially, the website claimed $16.5 billion in savings, largely attributed to canceled contracts. However, this figure was revised to $7.2 billion by Thursday, with the change primarily due to an $8 billion error.
A review of the "wall of receipts" by Business Insider revealed that several entries had been modified, accounting for most of the difference. Notably, DOGE initially claimed to have canceled an $8 billion contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. This was later corrected to $8 million, with DOGE attributing the error to a mistake by the agency's contracting officer.
Furthermore, DOGE initially claimed to save about $2 billion by canceling three USAID deals worth $655 million each. This was later revised to a single contract, amounting to another $1.3 billion reduction.
According to a White House official, DOGE calculates savings by subtracting already obligated funds from a contract's total award value. This method is considered conservative as it doesn't account for recovered obligated funds or administrative savings.
Elon Musk has acknowledged the possibility of errors, stating that "nobody's going to bat a thousand" and that mistakes will be corrected promptly.
DOGE's total estimated savings are $55 billion, according to the summary on its site. However, the website currently only includes estimates for savings from "contract/lease cancellations." Musk has stated that DOGE aims to cut at least $1 trillion from the federal deficit.
7 Comments
Habibi
These revisions don’t negate the massive savings reported. They actually reinforce the importance of honest accounting.
ZmeeLove
Managing billions in savings is a gargantuan task. Minor miscalculations are inevitable when handling such huge numbers.
Muchacho
Admitting mistakes and correcting them shows a commitment to transparency that many government agencies lack.
Coccinella
These errors and revisions make it hard to take any of their claims seriously. Where’s the real transparency?
Africa
An $8 billion error? That’s not a minor misstep—it’s a major blunder in managing billions of dollars.
Matzomaster
Instead of cleaning up the deficit, this sloppy bookkeeping only undermines trust in our government’s efficiency.
Leonardo
Government efficiency means learning from errors. Keeping track of receipts and revising numbers is part of the process.