For the second time in two weeks, DOGE’s “receipts” don’t match its claims.
On Monday, the Department of Government Efficiency released another round of so-called “receipts” — or canceled contracts to show its cost cutting — and posted them on its “wall of receipts.” As was the case with the first round, this set, too, contained inaccuracies.
Despite doubling the number of listed contracts, the updated itemized savings now total $9.6 billion, a sharp drop from the original $16.6 billion in savings DOGE itemized last week. At the same time, DOGE is now claiming total savings of $65 billion — far higher than the amount itemized, and an increase from its earlier claim of $55 billion, much of which has previously been called into question.
$65 billion is approximately 0.9% of the entire 2024 federal budget of $6.75 trillion.
DOGE’s website claims this higher figure includes savings from contract and lease terminations, renegotiations, grant cancellations, layoffs and other miscellaneous reductions, but DOGE has not supplied documentation for the vast majority of the savings it claims.
In addition, $144.6 million is attributed to real estate savings, but DOGE has provided no supporting details beyond the dollar figure, agency and city, making independent verification difficult.
DOGE has not explained why it reduced the itemized total, but this is likely due to errors in the original reporting — many of which were first identified by news organizations including CBS News.
Initially, DOGE listed 1,127 receipts. That number has now grown to 2,299, though 34% of them report zero savings. The newly added receipts also contain apparent errors and instances of double, triple and even quadruple counting.
Nathan Howard / REUTERS
Many of the contracts included in the “wall of receipts” were unlikely to reach the amount of savings that DOGE is claiming. According to Michael LeJeune, a private consultant with an expertise in government contracts, many of these are specific types of agreements with “unfunded requirements and they rarely get used” to the full amount. He also says it appears that some of these unfunded or partly-funded contracts are being counted multiple times.
For example, there is a quadruple listing for a contract for DEI training and assessment services for the Department of Agriculture. The overall contract was $25 million, and four companies that provided these services drew funding from that single contract. DOGE, however, mistakenly listed each company as having a separate $25 million contract — wrongly claiming a total of $100 million in savings.
Other listings also raise questions, including:
Three separate items list savings of $15 million each, but each item references the same contract, a blanket purchase agreement, under different contractors. A blanket purchase agreement is a standard government agreement that is often used for simple repetitive purchases. In this case, the Environmental Protection Agency contract was for “human resources consulting services.” The Trump administration terminated the agreement on Jan. 25, referring to the contract as “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Enterprise Services Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs).” It is unclear how much of the contract’s funding had already been spent.
Two line items list $9,999,999 in savings for a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau contract cancellation, although both of those are for the same contract.
In its first receipt release, DOGE listed another contract three times, claiming total savings of $1.965 billion. In reality, government records indicate that only $400 million had been spent over four years across 44 subcontracts, with minimal remaining expenditures expected. The latest DOGE update now lists one of these contracts as saving $0.35, another at zero savings, and a third at $18,171,886.
An earlier posting incorrectly claimed $8 billion in savings from a canceled contract, due to an apparent typo in the original document. The actual contract was worth $8 million. The contracting company, D&G Solutions, confirmed to CBS News that this was an accounting error and that $3.8 million had already been spent. Despite this, DOGE continues to list $8 million in savings for the contract’s cancellation, when the actual figure is $4.2 million.
DOGE has also taken credit on X for the sale of a building in Washington, D.C., claiming it as savings. However, CBS News found that the building was actually auctioned off during the Biden administration for approximately $4 million.
The largest single new “receipt” was $1.9 billion for IT work for the IRS, but it’s not clear if the cancellation was for the entire project or for a portion of the larger contract. CBS News has reached out to the contractor for more details and didn’t immediately hear back. There were at least five other awardees eligible for this seven-year blanket purchase agreement.
In late 2020, the Brookings Institution published a study that noted that in the government workforce, contractors outnumbered federal staff — that year, there were about 2.2 federal workers for every 5 contractors (the study also notes that President Trump added about 2 million jobs to that workforce during his first term). Now, as DOGE zeroes out these contracts, tens of thousands of government employees and contractors have likely lost their jobs as a result.
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