Some estimates made by Doge, the body charged with reducing US government spending, that it saved billions of dollars are “incorrect or lack supporting evidence”, a watchdog has found.
A report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has given an extensive review of Doge’s claims about its so-called “Wall of Receipts”, which reported savings of $110bn (£82bn) across contracts, grants and leases.
“Several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings,” the report stated.
Asked for comment, a White House official said the administration told the GAO that all employees had to complete ethics training and follow financial disclosure requirements.
Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, was not an official government department. It launched at the start of President Trump’s second term but closed last month. Its Wall of Receipts was a way of showing its purported savings in taxpayer money online.
Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and SpaceX who formerly led Doge but left in May 2025, initially promised to save as much as $2tn a year by slashing federal jobs and shuttering government programmes, among other cost-cutting measures.
Even by Doge’s own estimates, it fell short of that goal, as its website claims to have saved an estimated $214bn.
“While Doge provided some information about estimated savings, several issues limit the transparency and reliability of these reported savings,” the GAO report stated.
It said Doge had not been transparent regarding the methods it used to calculate savings, highlighting it “did not provide sufficient information to verify the method used to calculate 96% of Doge-reported savings”.
Among its specific findings was that 108 of the 264 leases identified by Doge for termination were already in the process of ending before the body was established.
That accounts for about $15.3m of the total $53.5m in savings Doge claimed.
“The Wall of Receipts does not include an explanation of how the savings from terminated leases were calculated,” the GAO said.
Claims were also made about savings that were not achieved, like $1.7bn for ending a defence department contract for IT services. However, the contract was never terminated and thus no savings were achieved, according to the congressional watchdog’s report.
“While the Wall of Receipts includes some information about the data and sources underlying reported savings, it does not sufficiently disclose limitations affecting data quality,” it assessed.
The GAO audit, which was carried out at the request of Democratic Senators Gary Peters and Richard Blumenthal, covered savings data reported from 20 January 2025 through 7 July 2026.
“Everyone supports rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but Doge was a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people while doing real damage to the government’s ability to serve them,” Senator Peters said in a statement on Thursday.
Under Musk, Doge pushed for massive reductions in the federal workforce, as well as the shuttering of programmes and even agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Some of Doge’s moves were met with legal fights, or were reversed. When the group’s cost-cutting resulted in bird flu officials at the US Department of Agriculture being fired, the Trump administration looked to re-hire them days later.
In a social media post last month announcing its closure, Doge said: “While the formal mission of Doge has come to an end, the mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue. Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars and accountable government are not temporary initiatives.”
