The Government Accountability Office released a report Thursday finding that DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts,” the public website Elon Musk’s team used to display its claimed cost savings, systematically overstated those savings and in many cases claimed credit for work that had nothing to do with DOGE. The GAO examined $110 billion of DOGE’s claimed $215 billion total and found critical problems across every category.
The numbers, per Raw Story’s confirmed reporting on the GAO’s findings: 108 of 264 leases DOGE claimed credit for were already in the process of being terminated before DOGE existed. Of 13,476 contracts DOGE said it had terminated, nearly 2,000 actually were not. Of $61 billion in claimed contract savings, more than half, nearly $35 billion, was either not actually terminated or could not be verified because DOGE’s data lacked sufficient detail. Roughly $27.4 billion in claimed cancellation savings came from contracts that were never terminated at all. The GAO said it repeatedly submitted written questions to DOGE and received no response.
The specific example the GAO highlighted in its report is the one that requires the least elaboration. DOGE reported $1.7 billion in savings from the Department of Defense’s Defense Health Agency contract for IT services. DOGE met with Pentagon officials about the contract. DOGE reported the $1.7 billion on the Wall of Receipts. DOGE then did not cancel the contract. The contract is running. The $1.7 billion saving is on the wall. DOGE stopped operating on July 4, 2026. The Wall of Receipts has since added another $105 billion in claimed savings despite the organization no longer existing.
The audit was commissioned by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters and Richard Blumenthal. Musk aimed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending. He claimed $215 billion. The GAO examined $110 billion of that and found the methodology ranged from unverifiable to simply wrong. The Wall of Receipts remains online.
When the government audits the savings board and finds the savings are mostly wrong or never happened, and the organization that built it stopped existing, what exactly is still on the wall?
Sources
HuffPost: GAO Releases Scathing Report On ‘Incorrect’ Savings From Elon Musk’s DOGE
Raw Story: DOGE claims unravel in scathing new government report
Raw Story: Government report undercuts DOGE’s claimed successes
