DOGE team’s “wall of receipts” shows errors in tallying billions in savings
(CBS News) — After repeated delays, the Department of Government Efficiency on Monday released a “wall of receipts” — what it characterized as documentation of the money saved by the slashing cuts to jobs and contracts pushed by Elon Musk’s team at DOGE over the past several weeks.
The initial accounting was overstated by billions of dollars, a review by CBS News found.
Among the errors were contracts that DOGE identified for cuts, saying the move could save billions for taxpayers. But they were actually standard government funding vehicles called “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contracts. The DOGE team misread these specialized contracts, experts told CBS News, and as a result overstated their push for savings by as much as $1.96 billion.
A closer inspection of another big so-called savings: the cancellation of a contract DOGE identified as worth $8 billion was in fact worth only $8 million. This single mistake slashed the receipts of savings DOGE said it had identified in half — to $8.4 billion.
That error involved an award for Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Equal Opportunity Employment Office, and the contract described the project as “Program and Technical Support Services for Office of Diversity and Civil Rights.” In his first days in office, President Trump signed executive orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government.
