The New York Times reported that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) removed 31 resurrected federal contracts from its website, eliminating $122 million in falsely claimed savings. These contracts had been reinstated by federal agencies after initial cancellations orchestrated by DOGE.
This incident highlights a pattern of data errors by DOGE. Previous reports have revealed instances of double-counting cancellations and claiming credit for contracts ended decades ago. The group has consistently deleted erroneous information from its website after such reports surface.
While removing some contracts, DOGE added over 800 new terminated contracts and increased its overall savings estimate to $170 billion. The White House defended DOGE, stating that it is working at record speed to cut government waste.
Despite the deletions, 12 resurrected contracts, totaling $121 million in claimed savings, remain on DOGE's website.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is no longer claiming credit for killing dozens of federal contracts after The New York Times reported last week that they had already been reinstated.
The Times had identified 44 revived contracts, and 43 of them were still featured on the group’s online “Wall of Receipts” as of last week. Then, late Sunday, Mr. Musk’s group deleted those claims for 31 of the contracts from its website, eliminating $122 million of the savings it claimed to have achieved by cutting federal contracts.
Those savings had actually disappeared days or weeks before, when federal agencies reversed cancellations they had made at the behest of Mr. Musk’s group. One revived contract, which DOGE said was worth $108 million, was restored by the Department of Veterans Affairs after eight days. Mr. Musk’s group still listed it as “terminated” for two months after that.
The presence of revived contracts on DOGE’s list of “terminations” was the latest in a series of data errors that have inflated its success at saving money. In the past, the group has deleted other errors from its “Wall of Receipts” site after new reports found that they were double-counting the same cancellations or claiming credit for killing contracts that had ended decades before.
On Sunday night, Mr. Musk’s group also added more than 800 new terminated contracts and raised its overall savings estimate — across all government activity, not only contracts — to $170 billion from $165 billion. The group did not delete all of the resurrected contracts identified by The Times. It left 12 on the site, still claiming that terminating those had saved taxpayers $121 million.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the webpage would continue to be updated. He defended Mr. Musk’s group in a statement: “DOGE is working at record speed to cut waste, fraud and abuse, producing historic savings for the American people.”
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