The U.S. Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) has released another series of so-called “receipts” - or canceled contracts to demonstrate cost savings - and posted them on its “receipt wall.” But this set contained errors that overstated the amount of money saved.
Reported by UNN with reference to The New York Times and CBS News.
Last week, Elon Musk's government cost-cutting initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), posted a “wall of invoices” online, noting how much it has saved by canceling federal contracts.
However, inaccuracies and errors were found in this publication.
Compared to the initial $16.6 billion in DOGE savings identified last week, the detailed savings amount is now $9.6 billion. At the same time, DOGE is now calling for total savings of $65 billion - far more than the amount stated.
“The Invoice Wall is the only public accounting tool the organization has developed to document its work. But so far, this tool contains inaccuracies and, accordingly, raises doubts about the competent work of the organization, the publication writes.
Examples include:
An $8 billion cut to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The contract in question was actually worth $8 million. Apparently, the mistake came from a previous erroneous entry in the federal contract database. But contracting experts said the agency should have known better: ICE's total budget is about $8 billion, making it implausible that a single contract could be that large. DOGE has corrected the figure on its website, the New York Times notes .
Three cuts of $655 million in the U.S. Agency for International Development. In fact, it was one cut that was mistakenly counted three times. This was reported by CBS News.
The $144.6 million is attributed to real estate savings, but DOGE did not provide any supporting details beyond the dollar amount, agency, and city, making it difficult to independently verify.
Recently , DOGE, without further explanation, reduced the itemized total due to errors in the initial reports.
The total number of receipts has risen to 2,299, although 34% of them report zero savings. The newly added receipts also include cases of double, triple, and even quadruple counting, CBS reports.