Federal auditors say the Trump administration’s cost-cutting initiative padded its public tally of taxpayer savings with numbers that do not hold up. The Government Accountability Office released a report Thursday examining the Department of Government Efficiency’s Wall of Receipts.
The website, created by Elon Musk’s team, was used to publicize savings from canceled contracts, leases, and grants. The findings land months after DOGE formally shut down, reopening questions about a project once billed as a model for government transparency.
Auditors flag missing evidence behind billions in claims
GAO reviewed the $110 billion in savings DOGE reported through July 7, comparing the figures against federal databases including USASpending.gov and FPDS.gov. Investigators found many estimates lacked the documentation needed to confirm they were accurate. In several cases, the underlying paperwork did not exist at all.
Lawmakers who requested the review said the gaps undercut the credibility of DOGE’s own numbers, turning a showcase meant to prove efficiency into a source of doubt about how the agency actually operated. The site had claimed savings equal to roughly 1,335 dollars per taxpayer before the audit began.
Lease closures were already underway before DOGE existed
Auditors identified 108 of 264 leases the website credited to DOGE that were already moving toward termination before the agency was created in January 2025. DOGE listed the closures as its own achievement regardless, folding preexisting government decisions into its public scorecard.
The overlap inflated the appearance of new savings that predated the initiative’s work entirely, a pattern investigators flagged as one of the clearest examples of double counting scattered across the site’s contract and lease entries.
A 1.7 billion dollar defense contract never touched
One of the report’s sharpest examples involves the Defense Health Agency. DOGE claimed 1.7 billion dollars in savings by identifying an IT services contract spanning facilities worldwide for termination.
Auditors found the contract was never canceled or reduced in any way, meaning the government realized no savings at all despite the figure sitting on the public site for months.
GAO cited the case as evidence that DOGE counted planned cuts as completed ones well before any action followed.
Grant savings rest on math the agency will not explain
The review found DOGE could not verify the calculation method behind 96 percent of the savings it attributed to grant terminations. GAO said the agency never updated the site’s documentation after launching it in February 2025 to clarify how it arrived at its figures, leaving the same unexplained numbers posted for well over a year.
That silence left investigators reconstructing much of the underlying math themselves using outside government data sources instead of DOGE’s own records.
Investigators say DOGE refused to cooperate with the review
GAO said DOGE did not respond to requests for information or interviews during the audit, forcing the team to reverse engineer the agency’s methodology instead of confirming it directly with staff.
The lack of engagement stands out given DOGE was created under an executive order that promised transparency in federal spending decisions.
Auditors noted the silence made it impossible to determine whether the errors reflected sloppy tracking or a deliberate choice to inflate the numbers.
Democratic senators say the findings confirm long standing suspicions
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan requested the review alongside Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and said the report validates concerns raised throughout DOGE’s existence.
Peters called the initiative a “slapdash and deceptive” effort that misled the American people in a statement responding to the findings.
He added that the agency also caused real damage to government services along the way. Musk and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.
Prior reporting had already raised doubts about the numbers
DOGE launched in January 2025 promising to cut 2 trillion dollars in federal spending before scaling that target down considerably as the year went on. Musk led the effort initially, then stepped back within months, and the agency formally wound down on July 4 after announcing its closure on social media.
The New York Times had documented discrepancies between DOGE’s public claims and its underlying data well before Thursday’s report. Their reporting suggested the accuracy problems had long been visible to anyone who looked closely.
Watchdog says unreliable data erodes trust regardless of intent
GAO recommended the site prominently disclose its data limitations rather than presenting the $ 110 billion figure without caveats for readers. The agency warned that unreliable government data erodes public trust no matter the underlying policy goal behind it, a line lawmakers are likely to cite as DOGE’s legacy gets litigated further.
Thursday’s findings followed a separate GAO report released a day earlier that flagged incomplete ethics and financial disclosure records among DOGE personnel, adding another layer of scrutiny to the agency’s brief existence.
