USA · 06 August, 2026 · 3 min read
GAO Finds Elon Musk’s DOGE Overstated $110 Billion Savings Claims
GAO found DOGE overstated $110 billion in savings and couldn't verify most claims. Savings estimates were incorrect or lacked supporting evidence across contracts, grants, and leases.
Whether the administration/DOGE prompted explanations for GAO methods and data quality limits.
7 of 8 outlets skipped it: white House cited ethics training and financial disclosure compliance.
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BBC
“Asked for comment, a White House official said the administration told the GAO that all employees had to complete ethics training”Read the original ↗
ABC News
““Because U.S. DOGE Service officials did not respond to requests for information, GAO could not determine the reasons why DOGE did not disclose””Read the original ↗
BBC adds an ethics-training White House response; ABC stresses GAO could not determine why.
GAO Challenges DOGE Savings
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) overstated or could not back up its $110 billion in claimed savings, examining savings figures posted on DOGE’s "Wall of Receipts" website covering the period from January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026.
“covering the period from January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026.”
Quartz reported that GAO found DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with terminated contracts and could not verify the method used to calculate 96 percent of reported grant savings.
ABC News said the GAO review found DOGE could not provide enough information to verify 96% of its reported savings from canceled grants and that DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate about half of the savings it reported.A
The watchdog also found that DOGE claimed $1.7 billion in savings from an IT services contract for the Defense Department’s Defense Health Agency, but "no changes were ever made" and no savings were achieved, according to Quartz and ABC News.A
Leases, Contracts, and Grants
GAO said DOGE’s lease savings were inflated, with Quartz reporting that DOGE claimed $113 million in savings across 264 lease terminations but the actual figure came to $53.5 million, leaving a $59.5 million gap between what was reported and what auditors could verify.
CNN reported that GAO found 108 of the 264 leases identified for termination were already in the process of ending before DOGE was created, and that DOGE overstated savings from leases by more than $80 million.
On contracts, Quartz said GAO found that 2,503 of the 13,476 contracts DOGE listed as terminated had not actually been cancelled at all, with those untouched contracts accounting for $27.4 billion in claimed savings.
ABC News added that the GAO found $27.4 billion in claimed savings was never executed and that DOGE did not provide identifying information for another $7.2 billion in claimed savings, while also finding DOGE failed to terminate some contracts it claimed to have canceled.A
Accountability and What’s Next
The GAO report was requested by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and ABC News said DOGE officials did not respond to GAO’s requests for information or interviews.A
“DOGE was a slapdash and deceptive effort”
In a statement highlighted by the BBC, Peters said, "Everyone supports rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but DOGE was a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people while doing real damage to the government's ability to serve them," as the watchdog criticized DOGE for transparency and reliability problems.B
The BBC also reported that DOGE was not an official government department, launched at the start of President Trump’s second term but closed last month, while its "Wall of Receipts" remained online claiming a total of $215 billion in taxpayer savings.B
Quartz said GAO’s sole recommendation called on the Executive Office of the President, acting through the U.S. DOGE Service, to make the Wall of Receipts' known data quality problems and methodological limitations clearly visible to anyone consulting the site, and it noted that the U.S. DOGE Service did not provide comments on the report.