A new government watchdog report delivers a blistering rebuke of DOGE, the Elon Musk-led cost-cutting initiative, finding it repeatedly overstated its savings and took credit for cuts it didn’t actually make.
The Government Accountability Office audit, covering June 2025 through this month, was requested by Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and represents the most thorough – and scathing – government assessment yet of DOGE’s public claims, The Washington Post reported.
“Elon Musk and the Trump administration claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate, took credit for work already underway, and refused to show its work, all while putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies,” Peters said.
DOGE, which swept through federal agencies after Trump’s second term began, dismantling USAID and gutting much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had aimed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
It fell far short even by its own numbers, with its “Wall of Receipts” website claiming $215 billion in savings. The GAO examined $110 billion of that figure tied to contracts, grants and leases — and found serious problems.
Among the findings: 108 of 264 leases DOGE claimed credit for were already in the process of being terminated before DOGE existed. Of 13,476 contracts DOGE said it had terminated, nearly 2,000 actually were not, and of $61 billion in claimed contract savings, more than half — nearly $35 billion — was either not actually terminated or couldn’t be verified because DOGE’s data lacked sufficient detail.
Roughly $27.4 billion in claimed cancellation savings came from contracts that were never terminated at all, with the GAO noting that other actions, like reducing a contract’s value, may have occurred instead.
The GAO said it repeatedly tried to obtain information from DOGE, submitting written questions, but “the U.S. DOGE Service did not respond to our inquiries.”
Musk and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
Fact-checkers and media outlets have previously found DOGE’s self-reported savings didn’t hold up to scrutiny, and updates to its website slowed dramatically after Musk’s departure, with some claimed savings later quietly removed.
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