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The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly deleted its five biggest “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.” They included major accounting errors, incorrect assumptions and outdated data; some contracts closed and claimed as savings by DOGE actually ended during the Biden administration, the newspaper noted.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 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.
The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment about the removal of the top five savings from the “wall of receipts” and the increased total savings figure nevertheless.
The largest point of savings 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 claimed that its initial “receipts” only showed about 20 percent of the $55 billion in savings it claimed. The Times noted that even that fraction could “not be reconciled” with the numbers DOGE provided.
Some critics surmised that Musk’s young band of techies recently out of college don’t understand the contract system or even basic bookkeeping.
In another mistake, DOGE 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.
