The math just isn’t mathing
In under 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, America is already seeing dramatic shifts—particularly in the federal workforce.
After Trump urged Elon Musk to aggressively pursue his goal of slashing $2 trillion from government spending, Musk, head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wasted no time making sweeping changes. Mass layoffs of probationary employees, deferred resignation offers, and a blanket email demanding that government workers justify their positions have been just the start.
While there are growing questions about the legality of Musk’s actions, he continues to wield his “chainsaw” approach to federal spending. Despite Trump’s approval of DOGE’s progress, there have been several missteps, and some suspiciously inflated claims about the actual savings the department has achieved so far.
The New York Times has revealed a stunning revelation about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claiming that over $4 billion in savings have been wiped from the books. While DOGE initially boasted about its savings, with a flashy ‘wall of receipts’ showing a claimed $105 billion in taxpayer relief, questions are now swirling about whether the numbers even remotely add up. This equates to a tempting $652.17 per taxpayer—if the figures are accurate.
According to the NYT, on March 2, DOGE suddenly removed over 1,000 contracts it previously said had been canceled. This amounted to a shocking 40% of all the contracts supposedly axed that week. However, the department quickly replaced these erased contracts with another 1,000 cancellations, but these represented a far smaller sum of savings.
The blunder took a more embarrassing turn when DOGE deleted its five ‘biggest’ savings after journalists pointed out glaring mistakes in its reported numbers. For example, three separate mentions of a $655 million cut at the U.S. Agency for International Development turned out to be false—those cuts were closer to just $18 million. Similarly, a reported $232 million cut at the Social Security Administration was massively inflated, with the actual reduction coming in at only $560,000.
In response to the mounting criticism, DOGE issued a statement saying, “We are working to upload all of our receipts in a digestible and transparent manner consistent with applicable rules and regulations.” However, the problem remains that the ‘wall of receipts’ does not account for all the cuts made, making it increasingly difficult to defend the claimed $105 billion in savings.
The New York Times uncovered multiple discrepancies in the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) reported savings, with millions being falsely reported as billions. Even more concerning, DOGE is taking credit for contracts that were canceled during the Biden administration—or in some cases, decades ago. Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, noted the lack of organization, stating: “Overall, there’s a certain randomness to it. It seems like DOGE had certain agencies pull together some random lists of contracts that may or may not currently exist anyway, and then, without checking the data very well, uploaded it onto a website and summed up the amounts. It doesn’t seem to be centrally coordinated.”
Both the DOGE and the White House declined to comment on the NYT’s findings, but a subtle change in language on the DOGE website now shifts the blame, claiming that figures “originate directly from agency contracting officials.”
One of the most glaring errors was the claimed savings of $1.9 billion for canceling an Internal Revenue Service contract for tech assistance. This was DOGE’s largest reported savings, but it turns out that the contract had actually been axed under the Biden administration in November 2024.
At this point, it’s clear: someone needs to double-check their math.
