DOGE continues to say it's slashing costs but cuts are fraction of what's claimed, CBS News analysis finds

CBS News

2 hours ago

The spotlight may have moved off the Department of Government Efficiency since the departure of Elon Musk, but the Trump administration's DOGE continues to post about cost cutting on its so-called "wall of receipts." And once again, some of its claims about savings appear to be significantly overstated, according to a CBS News review.
The review of three of the largest cuts claimed so far indicates the savings from those contracts are less than 3% of what DOGE said they were.
On July 27, DOGE added 705 canceled contracts to the website it uses to track and declare savings from the agency's cost cutting across the federal government, among them three of the largest claimed cuts posted since President Trump launched DOGE in January.
The three contracts — all from the Department of Health and Human Services — funded COVID-19 testing and treatment for people who were uninsured or underinsured during the pandemic. DOGE claims canceling those contracts saved $6.4 billion.
But CBS News' review of transaction records indicates the actual savings is just a small fraction of that — around $165 million.
That's about how much in obligated funds were left unspent in the three contracts by the time Mr. Trump took office and DOGE was launched. There was nearly $7 billion that remained, but this figure represented a ceiling that federal contracting experts say is rarely reached.
DOGE adjusted down that total potential value by a combined $6.4 billion — and then reported it as savings. But with the pandemic long over and the contracts set to expire on May 31 of this year, it is highly unlikely the contractors, which included Walgreens and CVS, would have spent anywhere near that sum on COVID-19 testing and treatment.
The spending "was never going to reach this number," said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, referring to the total potential value. "You didn't have to terminate this contract, you are the government — just don't obligate any more money."
Since it was launched, multiple news outlets including CBS News have reported that DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" has at times vastly overstated the amount of funds cut and discovered numerous errors in the group's accounting.
DOGE now claims it has saved $52.2 billion – just from contracts canceled. Malkus, who analyzed the actual implications of the cancellations rather than the ceiling values, puts the number closer to $17.8 billion. But that would only be if Congress agreed to rescind the funds that it had already voted to spend.
The DOGE website reports a grand total of $199 billion saved, when factoring in real estate lease cancellations and other cuts such as personnel reductions. However, it provides no documentation for roughly half of that amount. According to DOGE, the savings equate to $1,236.02 per person in the U.S.
"The amount they have per person is fiction," Malkus said. "It's transparency theater."
HHS did not respond to a CBS News request for comment about the three contracts. The White House redirected the request to the General Services Administration, which declined to comment.
A substantial portion of those purported savings is a result of cuts to USAID. A recent study in the medical journal The Lancet says those cuts could come with a human toll. By the study's estimates, the loss in humanitarian aid could lead to 14 million deaths in children younger than 5 years of age by 2030.
Malkus told CBS News, "Their claims are generally to say, 'Hey this is a lot of pain, but it's worth it.'"
The update is only the second since Musk, who launched DOGE, departed from his role in the White House advising Mr. Trump.
Shortly before Musk's term as a special government employee expired, he told reporters, "This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning."
"The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only grow stronger," he said from the Oval Office on May 30, adding that he was confident over time DOGE would cull $1 trillion in savings.
It's unclear exactly how DOGE has functioned since then. In late June, The Washington Post reported that federal officials were instructed to stop routing the grant-making process through DOGE, revoking control of the online clearinghouse for all grant opportunities from the group. In DOGE's latest update, only one additional canceled grant was added.
Several DOGE-associated government employees have left in recent weeks, including the Department of the Interior's Tyler Hassen, whose last day was Friday, The New York Times reported. Hassen was originally hired as a DOGE staffer, and then was later tasked with trimming costs at the Interior Department, where he was named principal deputy assistant secretary of the interior.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had allowed him broad authority to make cuts to budgets and staffing, and under his watch, a DOGE-associated employee made the claim that a single survey costing $1 billion dollars had been cut. That claim was repeated by Elon Musk and Burgum, but no evidence was ever supplied to back it up.