Elon Musk’s DOGE Deletes Dozens of Claims of Cost-Cutting After Investigation Reveals They Are False

Elon Musk speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency deleted over 30 different government contracts from its website’s “Wall of Receipts” this week after a New York Times investigation found them to still be active.

The Times’s David A. Fahrenthold and Jeremy Singer-Vine reported last week on what they called “DOGE’s Zombie Contracts” – federal spending Musk’s team had claimed had been “terminated,” but in reality continued under various federal agencies. In the report, the Times found 44 contracts that DOGE had claimed to end, but were still active. By Tuesday, 31 of those contracts had been removed from DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts.” The 44 contracts accounted for some $220 million of federal spending Musk’s team claimed it had saved, while the 31 amounted to $122 million.

In late April, the Partnership for Public Service (PSP) found that from the $160 billion DOGE had claimed to save the federal government, some additional $130 billion would need to be spent. The nonpartisan research group came up with the sum by calculating the “costs associated with putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity,” reported CBS News at the time.

The cost of DOGE’s activity shines a spotlight on how little it has actually saved, while ending programs that countless people around the globe counted on for various lifesaving needs, like basic food and medicine provided by USAID.

The Times noted in its report that one of the largest contracts Musk’s team claimed to kill was a $108 million spent by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which was revived a mere eight days after DOGE ended it. “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,” added the Times reporting.

Musk’s DOGE has been plagued by controversy, which began when Musk wrongly claimed that USAID had spent millions of dollars to buy condoms in Gaza. A claim President Donald Trump later wildly trumpeted as a $100 million for “condoms for Hamas.”