Just how much has DOGE exaggerated its numbers? Now we have receipts.

Politico

2 days ago

DOGE's latest figures on contract cuts ticked up to $54.2 billion in an update posted on Tuesday.
POLITICO's findings come on top of months of scrutiny of DOGE's accounting, but the magnitude of DOGE's inflated savings claims has not been clear until now.
Even so, President Donald Trump claimed hundreds of billions of dollars had already been used to reduce the federal deficit. The former head of DOGE, Elon Musk, initially promised the organization would reduce the deficit by $2 trillion. Many in Trump's Cabinet have also celebrated DOGE's efforts, including his secretaries of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture.
DOGE's savings calculations are based on faulty math. The group uses the maximum spending possible under each contract as its baseline — meaning all money an agency could spend in future fiscal years. That amount can far exceed what the government has actually committed to pay out.
Counting this 'ceiling value' gives a false picture of savings for taxpayers.
'That's the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it and then saying, 'I've just saved $20,000,'' said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. 'Anything that's been said publicly about [DOGE's] savings is meaningless.'
The White House disagrees. DOGE has produced 'historic savings for the American people,' White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields wrote in an email in response to questions about DOGE's activities. DOGE's site, he said, provides up-to-date and accurate information. 'All numbers are rigorously scrubbed with agency procurement officials and updated in real time based on current information,' he said.
DOGE's public list of records, or what it calls its 'wall of receipts,' says the site only represents a subset of the organization's overall savings. However, even among the sample of contracts it posted through July, roughly 40 percent of claimed savings could not be verified due to a lack of identifying information.
DOGE's fuzzy math
DOGE claims it has saved $202 billion across the whole of the federal government from a combination of contract, lease and grant cancellations, workforce reductions, regulation clawbacks and more.
To create savings from canceling contracts or other awards, DOGE has a few options: The president could formally claw back funds through Capitol Hill — a process where Congress cancels dollars it had previously appropriated, which it did this month for the first time in decades — or agencies could reclaim awarded funds for later use, an action known as a deobligation.
To assess DOGE's actual savings so far from canceled contracts, POLITICO created a database of every traceable termination posted on DOGE's wall of receipts through July 26 that was at least one month old, about 10,100 contracts.
Over this period, agencies have issued clawbacks, or deobligations, on less than 30 percent of those awards, recovering $1.4 billion in funds.
Even if agencies immediately recovered all unspent funds from these 10,100 contracts, the total savings would amount to less than 40 percent of what DOGE has taken credit for. And agencies would still be on the hook to spend those dollars unless Congress or the president intervened, though some in the administration have said they could simply spend less.
Roughly 2,400 cancellations on DOGE's termination list through July cannot be independently verified. Some of these cancellations were simply too recent to show up in public records, but most had their identifying information redacted by DOGE, which has often labeled those entries as 'unavailable for legal reasons.'
DOGE's list is filled with exaggerated savings claims across the federal government. Some contracts included on DOGE's termination list have only been modified and not canceled; others have been removed from the list without explanation.
Under the VA, for example, DOGE's page reported savings of $932 million from contracts canceled though June, including awards for a cancer registry, suicide prevention services and other health care support. Federal records show the VA recovered just $132 million from these awards, or less than 15 percent of what DOGE claimed, and that the VA reinstated the contract for suicide prevention support.
These contracts were canceled because VA staff could perform the necessary work in-house, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz wrote in an email. The VA, he said, has avoided up to $27 billion in costs from reviewing and downsizing thousands of contracts 'to ensure each one of them benefits Veterans and is a good use of taxpayers' money.'
But the bulk of DOGE's actions show a different approach to savings entirely: lowering the ceiling value, which experts equate to an accounting trick.
Lowering the ceiling decreases the potential price tag, but it's not guaranteed those dollars would have been spent to begin with.
'Voila! Half a billion saved. Time for lunch,' said one federal contracting lawyer with nearly four decades' experience advising government contractors who was granted anonymity to explain the practice freely.
At most, for contracts where the ceiling exceeds the obligated amount, this kind of action amounts to avoiding future expenses that were never guaranteed to happen.
In total, the administration removed $14 billion from contract ceilings on the traceable contracts on its 'wall of receipts' through July — a far cry from the $32.7 billion DOGE claimed to have saved from terminating them.
In reality, the ultimate savings from terminations are nearly impossible to predict.
DOGE's calculations, for instance, don't account for expenses that come from ending contracts prematurely, like payments for outstanding leases, subcontractors, or work already performed, which can add up quickly.
'There's no certainty because we haven't finished understanding termination costs of anything,' Tillipman said. That can take years to untangle. Until then, 'we don't know any of it,' she said, referring to savings.
Plus, even drafting a contract costs money.
'You have spent multiple months or even years and many people's time getting to the best negotiated terms for the public's interest,' said Cristin Dorgelo, a former senior adviser in the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration.
By law, agencies are still required to spend any funds Congress appropriated to them, including money they claw back from individual projects. They have some discretion to change how they spend it — perhaps to negotiate a better deal or to align it with the administration's priorities. Failing to spend appropriated dollars could violate the Impoundment Control Act, a law Trump's budget director, Russell Vought, has repeatedly said is unconstitutional.
DOGE's actions will avoid future costs among the contracts it has terminated, experts agreed. But how much that ultimately amounts to and how much is returned to the Treasury, they said, lies somewhere in the middle of the numbers DOGE has published and what federal spending records show.
DOGE-flation in action
One of DOGE's largest savings claims is from a canceled contract for a shelter in Pecos, Texas, to house unaccompanied migrant children.
In a post on X in February, DOGE said the Department of Health and Human Services 'paid ~$18M/month' to keep the now-empty center open. Canceling the agreement, it said, would translate to more than $215 million in annual savings for taxpayers.
By the time the contract was added to the DOGE termination list, that savings claim skyrocketed to $2.9 billion.
DOGE's math was simple: It took the difference between the contract's $3.3 billion ceiling and the amount that had been formally awarded, or obligated — $428 million — and called it savings.
But HHS and its Office of Refugee Resettlement were not on track to spend anywhere close to the contract's ceiling.
That ceiling represented what it would cost the government to fund the Pecos center at full capacity — 3,000 children — for 365 days a year, for five years. If the center was not full, the government would pay less, according to four people familiar with the contract who were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
But the Pecos campus had been empty since February 2024. Instead, an $18 million price tag per month covered operating costs to keep the center ready to receive children with just two weeks' notice — an option the refugee resettlement office invoked at least twice during the lifetime of the contract.
In total, the resettlement office had committed to pay no more than $428 million in rental, maintenance, security and IT expenses for the 80-acre campus through November, the four people said. At that time, the contract would be reviewed for renewal or cancellation.
'The bottom line is that the contract already had built in savings and efficiency into the way it was by the way it was structured,' one of the four people said.
The most the government could save by canceling the contract for the Pecos campus before the November decision date would be about $126 million, or the amount the contractor, Family Endeavors, had yet to withdraw for upcoming monthly expenses. That's 4 percent of DOGE's $2.9 billion in claimed savings.
Family Endeavors referred POLITICO to a written statement responding to the contract's cancellation that said the group's mission of 'serving vulnerable communities' is ongoing.
To date, no funds have been returned to the Treasury from canceling this contract. ORR has not recalled funds because it anticipates future termination costs, according to the four people familiar with the contract. By the time that happens, actual savings from canceling this contract will be even less.
'The Biden Administration wasted more than $1.8 billion dollars on a facility to house illegal aliens, which has not been used in the last year,' HHS director of communications Andrew G. Nixon wrote in an email. 'Under Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy's leadership, HHS is ensuring that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely and not in support of illegal immigration.'
The Interior Department, which administers the contract, referred questions to HHS.
DOGE also claimed $166 million in savings from canceling a contract that plays a central role in the Energy Department's ability to keep household appliances like refrigerators and microwaves as efficient as possible.
The Energy Department is required by law to set efficiency standards on roughly 70 products and appliances in order to reduce energy demand. Under an eight-year contract DOGE claims to have canceled, consulting firm Guidehouse Inc. provided the analysis used to set these standards.
The Energy Department said the contract had not been canceled, but reduced, saying it achieved 60 percent 'in significant savings for the American taxpayer.'
DOGE posted the contract on its list of terminations a few weeks before the agency repealed 20 appliance efficiency standards in May without any supporting evidence, said Emily Hammond, who served as deputy general counsel at the Energy Department during the Biden administration.
'DOE seems to be abnegating its duties,' Hammond said. 'Congress has required the agency to do its homework, and it doesn't appear to be doing that homework.'
While DOGE claims $166 million in savings from terminating the agreement, federal spending records show the Energy Department has recalled $0 and removed just under $100 million from the contract's ceiling value.
At most, that translates to $0 in savings to date and around $100 million in potentially avoided future costs.
The irony, Hammond said, is that the efficiency standards Guidehouse helped to create save billions of dollars for consumers. 'The cost of developing them is quite small in contrast to the enormous impact,' Hammond said.
The Energy Department has said dropping the regulations will lower costs for consumers, but efficiency standards saved households and businesses $105 billion in 2024, according to the department's own data — a far cry from DOGE's claimed $166 million in savings.
Guidehouse declined to comment on the status of this contract.
Holes in the wall
The future of the 'wall of receipts' and of the organization remains uncertain. Updates to DOGE's public accounting page have become more infrequent since Musk's exit in May. The page's three most recent updates represented the longest periods of silence since the site launched in February. It was stagnant for most of June and went nearly four weeks before posting new terminations in July. Another 17 days passed before its latest update in August.
The same is true of Trump and Musk's relationship. After leaving DOGE, Musk declared war on Trump's megabill, which the president signed into law on the Fourth of July. The two took their breakup to X, lobbing insults on the world's stage.
'What the heck was the point of @DOGE if [Trump]'s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??,' Musk wrote on X in July, referring to the deficit increase. The law will increase the national debt by $3.4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Now, Musk has committed to starting a third party with the same goal as DOGE: reduce government spending.
METHODOLOGY
POLITICO relied on public federal spending records from USA Spending and the Federal Procurement Data System as well as DOGE's list of terminated contracts available on its ' wall of receipts ' for this report. (DOGE's website says its list of terminations are a subset of all canceled awards, but its ledger remains the only public log of its activity.)
For this analysis, POLITICO excluded any contracts with a termination date within one month of its July 26 update, as DOGE cautions on its site that 'FPDS posting of the contract termination notices can have up to a 1 month lag.'
POLITICO also excluded any contract terminations without a valid link to the Federal Procurement Data System, which contains additional identifying information POLITICO used to match each contract termination with federal spending records and was necessary for this analysis. When available, old versions of the DOGE data were used for USAID contract cancellations that were stripped of identifying information on the DOGE website due to 'legal reasons' without further explanation.
Among contract terminations where savings could be verified, POLITICO compiled every transaction that has taken place between Jan. 20 and July 26, the date of DOGE's second-most recent update, in order to assess savings created by DOGE so far. 'Savings' represents dollars put back into the hands of agencies for later use. Agencies are required to spend dollars appropriated to them by Congress.
Contracts added, removed or modified in DOGE's Aug. 12 data are not part of this analysis.
Only 30 percent of the contracts POLITICO reviewed had deobligations, or money returned to the agency. The remainder either had no transaction activity during the Trump administration through July 26 or had only positive obligations during that period.
Each contract has a few possible states:
At least one reduction in spending: POLITICO considered all deobligations reflective of DOGE's savings to date. In some cases, agencies added funds to a contract after a deobligation or reduction in ceiling value, effectively reducing the amount saved. POLITICO counted all activity on a contract after the first deobligation or reduction in ceiling value to show the net total of dollars saved or ceiling value reduced, respectively.
No changes: While DOGE says it has terminated the contract, there has been no change, negative or positive, to the amount the government has committed to spending. These contracts result in $0 in government savings to date by POLITICO's accounting.
Only new spending: There are many instances where contracts on DOGE's termination list showed additional spending during the search period and no deobligations. POLITICO did not count these dollars against DOGE's savings tally (unless that positive obligation happened after a negative obligation). This is to provide additional accounting for lags in DOGE actions appearing in public accounting records.