Featured Image Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty
We're not even 100 days into the presidency of Donald Trump, but already, we're looking at a very different America.
Well, at least in terms of the federal workforce.
After the POTUS told Elon Musk to be more aggressive in his mission to cut $2 trillion from government spending, the head of the DOGE made good on the mass firings of probationary workers, pushing the deferred resignation offer, and sending out a blanket email demanding government workers justify their jobs.
There are questions about whether Musk's work is even legal, but for now, the 'special government employee' is continuing to take a chainsaw to the federal spend.
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While Trump says he's happy with DOGE's work, there have been more than a few fumbles along the way and some seemingly fudged numbers on what the organization has actually saved.
In an article attempting to blow the lid off what's going on inside the DOGE right now, the New York Times claims that over $4 billion worth of savings have been deleted.
The DOGE's supposed 'wall of receipts' shows savings made and currently states that it's saved the U.S. taxpayer $105 billion. That works out at a pretty tasty $652.17 per taxpayer...if the numbers add up.
According to the NYT, March 2 saw the DOGE erase over 1,000 contracts that it once claimed to have canceled. This is over 40% of all contracts it's said to have canceled that week, although it then added another 1,000 canceled contracts that represented a much smaller sum of total savings.
The embarrassing turn of events came after the DOGE deleted its wall of receipts’ five 'biggest’ savings after several outlets pointed out they were riddled with mistakes.
This included three mentions of $655 million cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was incorrectly reported three times and was said to be nowhere near $655 million even once. It has now been scaled back to a grand total of just $18 million.
There was also the incorrect reporting of a massive contract cut of $232 million at the Social Security Administration, whereas the real sum was just a $560,000 part of it. The official DOGE site says: "We are working to upload all of our receipts in a digestible and transparent manner consistent with applicable rules and regulations.
“To get started, listed below are a subset of contract, grant, and lease cancellations, representing ~30% of total savings."
One problem is that the 'wall' doesn't include all of the cuts made, meaning it's hard to justify the supposed $105 billion savings.
As pointed out by the NYT, there are multiple incidents where millions are incorrectly reported as billions, as well as taking credit for contracts that were canceled during the Biden administration or even decades earlier.
Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said: "Overall, there’s a certain randomness to it. It seems like DOGE had certain agencies pull together some random lists of contracts that may or may not currently exist anyway, and then, without checking the data very well, uploaded it onto a website and summed up the amounts. It doesn’t seem to be centrally coordinated."
The DOGE and The White House didn't respond to the NYT's request for comment, but now, wording has been changed to seemingly shift blame as it adds that figures "originate directly from agency contracting officials."
This time around, scrapped savings included $1.9 billion for axing an Internal Revenue Service contract for tech help. This was the DOGE's single biggest claim to savings, but in reality, the contract was canceled under Biden in November 2024.
It looks like someone needs a better calculator.
