Federal watchdog reveals what Elon Musk’s DOGE team really did with $110 billion
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) might have actually saved far less than the private agency's already disappointing claims, with a federal watchdog investigation revealing exactly where the $110 billion claimed cuts came from.
There was certainly no room for modesty when Elon Musk first proposed the creation of DOGE, as he was confident that he'd be able to cut upwards of $2 trillion from the federal budget and save America from what he deemed to be impending political bankruptcy.
That lofty goal quickly evaporated once the world's richest man actually got the keys to the castle, however, initially halving to $1 trillion before Musk reportedly informed U.S. President Donald Trump that it would probably settle at around a tenth of that, as per Futurism.
The official DOGE website claims that $215 billion was saved overall by the agency, although just $110 billion of that was accounted for between the months of January and June 2025 — when Musk was officially the head of the agency before his relationship with Trump went up in flames.
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Now, following an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), it appears as if this already minuscule figure is actually far lower, with misrepresented savings seemingly across the board.
Government watchdog discovers how DOGE manipulated savings totals
The watchdog's findings, as reported by The Washington Post, reveal that DOGE commonly counted government contracts that were already set to be cancelled before the agency's creation, alongside boasting maximum spending totals and including contracts that never actually ended up being cut.
Over half of the reported $61 billion in contract savings – which itself accounted for more than half of the total January to July savings by DOGE – came either from contracts that weren't actually terminated, or simply couldn't be verified in the first place.
Additionally, of the 13,476 supposed contract terminations by DOGE, nearly 2,000 of these were 'botched' and were never actually disposed of, leaving their savings null and void.
108 of the 264 leases DOGE claims it axed were already in the process of termination too, and a staggering 96% of the savings reported from grants were unverifiable by GAO, suggesting that they don't exist too.
Much of the figures associated with DOGE's savings were also misrepresented by Musk's team using the maximum spending limit associated with the contract, which is most of the time far higher than what is actually spent.
How much did DOGE actually save in the end?
It's difficult to settle on an actual figure associated with DOGE's overall savings, especially as so many of the reportedly terminated contracts and grants are unverifiable, yet it's likely fewer than half at the very least of the $110 billion it supposedly cut across the first seven months of the year.
A report from Politico last August – which occurred a few months after Musk exited office in flames – suggested that the $52.8 billion supposedly saved from contracts could in actuality be as low as just $1.4 billion, so extending that to the wider cuts and you create a rather embarrassing picture compared to the initially immense goals.
What's impossible to deny, however, is the impact that Musk's cuts had on countless key industries, as the billionaire wiped out key funding support for areas involving science, foreign aid, education, labor, and the environment, and to do so without even any financial benefit is an even greater slap in the face for those impacted.