Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, affectionately known as DOGE, has discreetly taken down a staggering $1 billion in savings from its online presence.
Since its creation when Donald Trump was sworn into office again, DOGE has raised eyebrows.
Back in February, DOGE, the brainchild of Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Musk, claimed that it had saved a staggering $65 billion amid the numerous cuts it made.
‘DOGE’ t-shirt worn by Elon Musk in March (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
According to the site, DOGE has made its savings through a ‘combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions’.
However, many individuals have found it challenging to confirm the enormous figures that DOGE has been showcasing on its website, particularly given claims that it’s “full of errors.”
In February, the New York Post commented, “Though the DOGE team may have indeed trimmed a few billion dollars from their calculations, their careless bookkeeping reflects a troubling trend of irresponsibility, especially now that they’ve recently gained access to critical government payment systems.”
ABC News reported that others dubbed it ‘impossible’ to verify how much DOGE has saved.
Amid the scepticism about the figures shared online, NOTUS reports that DOGE has quietly removed almost $1 billion worth of savings from its advertised sum.
According to NOTUS, this sum of money seemingly disappeared overnight. On Tuesday (April 15), DOGE ‘removed around $962 million in previously claimed cuts and altered hundreds of others to boost individual items’ purported “savings” values’.
The publication also noted that despite DOGE’s pledge to be transparent about its savings and where they came from, the website wasn’t updated from the end of March to April 14.
The site was last updated on April 14, the time of this writing. The website says DOGE has saved $155 billion, over $900 per American taxpayer.
NOTUS also reports that nearly 650 grants and dozens of contracts and leases have been removed from the DOGE website over the past several weeks.
In addition to listing how much it has saved, DOGE has an ‘Agency Efficiency Leaderboard’.
The Department of Health and Human Services emerges as the leading savings champion, whereas the Department of Commerce trails behind with the least amount saved. In response to criticism surrounding DOGE, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the initiative, stating that “rogue bureaucrats and activist judges who are trying to derail this effort are simply going against the wishes of the American people.”