DOGE uses sketchy accounting to ‘drastically exaggerate’ savings, according to report

An in-depth new report from Politico determined that the Department of Government Efficiency (aka DOGE) has actually saved far less than it’s claimed. So, despite spending the last six months cancelling research grants, federal contracts, and firing federal employees across the country, DOGE has fallen far behind the savings promised by Elon Musk.

So far, DOGE has claimed $205 billion in total savings since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to its public “wall of receipts.”

However, Politico reports that the wall of receipts is sorely lacking in, well, some important receipts.

DOGE claims it has saved taxpayers $52.8 billion from canceled contracts, but Politico could only verify $32.7 billion worth of contracts. What’s worse is that, per Politico, the actual, tangible savings from those cancellations are closer to $1.4 billion. That’s because DOGE uses some creative accounting to “exaggerate” the total savings. We’ll get to that in a minute.

In other words, Politico reported that DOGE only saved about 2.6 percent of its claimed savings from cancelled contracts. Crucially, as Politico pointed out, none of that money can be taken off the federal deficit (which DOGE is supposed to be reducing) without Congressional intervention, as those dollars just get returned to the agencies.

Politico’s lengthy report is worth digging into, as it has all the technical details of how DOGE is using “faulty math” to come up with these numbers. When calculating savings, DOGE reports the maximum possible spending amount of each contract, not the actual or planned spending.

This has actually been a known problem with DOGE’s accounting since February. Often, experts use the analogy of a credit card limit to explain the limits of this approach. If you cancel a credit card with a $1 million limit, that doesn’t mean you’ve saved $1 million.

Politico’s report said that DOGE’s claimed savings are “drastically exaggerated,” and that “the magnitude of DOGE’s inflated savings claims has not been clear until now.”

The Trump administration told Politico in response to their story that the agency produced “historic savings for the American people,” and that DOGE’s public list of claimed savings is accurate and “updated in real time based on current information.”

These questions about DOGE’s exaggerated numbers may not surprise anyone who has been following along with Musk’s shenanigans since January. Musk, who officially left his post at DOGE earlier this year, initially claimed that the agency would save the government $2 trillion before quickly revising that goal down to $150 billion in April.

DOGE’s cuts have undoubtedly been effective in shuttering some government services, slashing foreign aid, and cutting $125 million in funding to support LGBTQ health initiatives.