(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency claimed it saved taxpayers $1.7 billion by identifying a single Pentagon health contract, but the contract was never canceled and taxpayers didn't save any money, a federal watchdog found.
The Government Accountability Office released its report Thursday. It found that DOGE did not follow its own stated method for calculating most of the savings it reported from terminated contracts. For grants, DOGE did not provide enough information to verify the method used to calculate 96% of its reported savings. And it found DOGE overstated lease savings by more than $80 million.
DOGE's temporary organization formally shut down July 4 under the executive order that created it. The broader U.S. DOGE Service continues. As of July 7, the Wall of Receipts remained live and had not been updated since Jan. 1. The disputed savings figures were still posted as of Thursday.
In one case, GAO found, DOGE claimed more than $1.7 billion in savings on a Defense Health Agency contract for IT support at more than 700 military medical facilities worldwide. DOGE initially flagged the contract for termination. But after meeting with Pentagon officials, it agreed no action should be taken. The contract was not canceled, so no money was saved, GAO found. The claimed $1.7 billion in savings still appears on the live Wall of Receipts page.
The $110 billion GAO reviewed covers only DOGE's claimed savings from contracts, grants and leases. DOGE's website reports $215 billion in total savings across all categories, including asset sales, workforce reductions and regulatory changes. That figure has not changed since Jan. 1. It is a fraction of the $2 trillion Elon Musk initially suggested.
The report was requested by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Peters called DOGE "a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people." He said it "claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate" and "took credit for work already underway."
Blumenthal said the findings make DOGE's savings "unreliable and unclear."
In response to questions about the report's findings, a White House official addressed only DOGE employees' ethics training and financial disclosure requirements, not the savings claims. The U.S. DOGE Service did not provide comments to GAO.
The report lands as the Trump administration has shifted its anti-fraud strategy. On the same day GAO published its findings, the White House launched Fraud.gov, another government site posting a large top-line savings figure, nearly $230 billion, for public view.
It tracks fraud "uncovered" by the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Trump created in March under Vice President JD Vance. The Fraud.gov figures have not been independently audited.
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