Elon Musk’s crusade to “fix” the US government is unraveling in real-time. His Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has once again been caught inflating its success, quietly erasing over $4 billion in claimed savings after multiple errors were exposed, reported the New York Times. This marks the second massive rollback in a week, fueling skepticism about the billionaire’s ability to overhaul the federal system.
A house of cards collapsing
Late Sunday night, DOGE deleted or altered more than 1,000 contracts from its widely publicized “wall of receipts”—a list meant to showcase Musk’s cost-cutting victories.
The removed contracts accounted for over 40% of all savings DOGE had claimed just days earlier, including five of its seven largest success stories. In their place, DOGE added roughly 1,000 new contract cancellations, but with much smaller total savings, reported the New York Times.
The numbers tell a damning story. When the “wall of receipts” launched on February 19, DOGE claimed $16 billion in savings. That figure has since plummeted to less than $9 billion—a nosedive that exposes serious flaws in Musk’s data-driven approach. Yet, despite these walk-backs, the initiative still boasts it has saved taxpayers over $100 billion, with little actual proof.
A mess of miscalculations
From the start, the receipts have been riddled with glaring errors and outright fabrications. Experts say DOGE repeatedly exaggerated figures, triple-counted savings, and took credit for cancellations that happened years—even decades—before Musk’s involvement.
Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, didn’t mince words: “There’s a certain randomness to it. DOGE seems to have thrown together a bunch of contracts, failed to verify them, and uploaded them as ‘savings.’ It’s sloppy at best, deceptive at worst.”
Among the latest deleted claims:
- A $1.9 billion “savings” from canceling an IRS tech support contract. In reality, the contract was canceled in November—before Musk took over.
- A $149 million “savings” from an administrative contract at the Department of Health and Human Services. The listing was riddled with errors and linked to an unrelated contract.
- A $133 million “savings” from canceling a USAID contract in Libya. The contractor had already completed the work last year.
Shifting the blame
Rather than own up to the blunders, DOGE has quietly rewritten its website to shift responsibility onto federal agencies, now claiming that all figures “originate directly from agency contracting officials.”
Yet, even after Sunday’s revisions, false claims remain. DOGE still lists $106 million in savings from canceling two Coast Guard contracts for administrative support—contracts that actually ended in 2005 and 2006, under George W. Bush.
Neither Musk’s team nor the White House has responded to the growing controversy. But one thing is clear: the billionaire’s grand vision of government efficiency is looking more like a billion-dollar illusion.
