Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency finally released a “wall of receipts” as part of its “maximum transparency” promise Monday, but some of their figures are not quite adding up.
The group boasted that its “estimated savings” for American taxpayers is $55 billion so far, but the total it gave Monday adds up to just a third of that figure—and appears to claim credit for the closure of two government offices that were shuttered under Joe Biden.
Those closures are the National Archives centers in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, and in Fairfield, Ohio. DOGE’s site claims the latter location was a “True Termination - Agency Closed Office.” No other details are offered.
Those centers’ approximate closing dates were announced way back on Aug. 1, however, when Biden was still president.
“The records and artifacts of the Barack Obama Presidential Library, which have been held temporarily at Hoffman Estates, will be permanently moved to College Park, MD, in late FY 2025,” a news release from National Archives announced at the time.
That release added of the Ohio location: “The records in the Fairfield facility are being relocated to other FRCs, including the Dayton FRC and Great Lakes storage facility during FY25.”
That announcement came 10 days after Harris took over the Democrats’ presidential ticket, which was well before the idea of DOGE had gained traction in MAGA World.
Now that Biden-era closing is being touted as a win by Musk’s Gen Z minions.
The “total savings” for both centers is a combined $780,308, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the country’s $6.8 trillion budget. It does, however, appear to call into question the legitimacy of other DOGE line items.
DOGE’s site has confused many users who have noted a handful of its nixed contracts showed a figure of $0 under “saved.” That includes a terminated contract for Dry Ice at the Department of Health and Human Services, which DOGE’s site lists as costing $104,190 but shows $0 in savings when clicked on for additional details.
Others claimed on X that Musk’s team were adding the full value of a contract into its total DOGE savings—even if the majority of the contract had already been paid out and will not be recuperated.
And the single biggest line-item cited by DOGE—a massive $8 billion contract with D&G Support Services, LLC for “PROGRAM AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR OFFICE OF DIVERSITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS (ODCR)” appears to be closer to $8 million—leading some to question whether DOGE had employed an automated data scraping system to compile the report without human oversight.
DOGE’s site does not say if its savings total accounts for the severance expected to be paid to tens of thousands of federal workers who accepted a buyout offer. Those workers, should the offer be honored, will continue being paid through the end of September and would likely nullify any so-called “savings” from their firings until October.
The sharing of DOGE’s receipts were initially promised by Friday, but that deadline was pushed back to “the weekend” and eventually to Monday.
DOGE’s homepage claims it discovered “fraud” and included it in its receipts, but no contracts were singled out as fraudulent by the group. It says the figures listed account for approximately 20 percent of “overall DOGE savings.”
A disclaimer on the DOGE site says it plans to eventually publish data “in a digestible and fully transparent manner with clear assumptions, consistent with applicable rules and regulations.”
DOGE has committed to updating the site twice a week and, eventually, to allow for it to display data in real time. For now, users can click on most line items and view the contract that was terminated. Among the cuts identified Monday were $10 million for “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision” and $29,000 for “Central America Gender Assessment Consultant Services For Forest Service IP.”
Musk has been quiet on X about his group’s newly-released receipts, but has continued to praise their efforts.
That included an incorrect boast that the group had saved near $110 billion—far more than any figure DOGE has claimed itself.
