Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) falsely claimed an $8 billion cost savings from a canceled government contract, which was later revealed to be worth only $8 million.
DOGE recently published a list of terminated government contracts, boasting a total of $55 billion in savings, the New York Times reported.
Nearly 15% of that amount—$8 billion—was attributed to the cancellation of a contract with D&G Support Services for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, scrutiny of federal records revealed that the actual value of the contract was only $8 million, not $8 billion, leading to accusations that DOGE had vastly overstated its impact.
We have reached out to the company who was awarded this contract and they have confirmed the ceiling was $8 million—NOT billion.
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 19, 2025
Here is their statement.
The federal government is cooking the books. https://t.co/Q9s4eytTKE pic.twitter.com/DGCHnT0CPe
"The federal government is cooking the books," one user wrote on X. "Oh, all they care about is spreading a lie, so goes halfway around the world before the truth even wakes up," another chimed in. "So... doge is NOT all that efficient, then, is it, if it can make a colossally huge mistake like this," a third person commented.
The discrepancy arose from a clerical error in a federal procurement database that initially listed the contract at $8 billion before being corrected to $8 million.
Despite the correction, DOGE continued to claim the higher savings figure. The error was first flagged by investigative journalists, prompting DOGE to quietly adjust its figures but without addressing how this affected the total reported savings.
Further investigation revealed additional inconsistencies in DOGE's accounting, including counting already-paid amounts as "savings" and attributing pre-existing government closures to its efforts.
DOGE has yet to publicly acknowledge the mistake or revise its total reported billions of dollars in savings.
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