Nearly $1 billion in savings reportedly claimed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has mysteriously vanished from its website without explanation.
Since its creation following Donald Trump’s return to office, DOGE has attracted scrutiny and skepticism. The agency, spearheaded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, made headlines in February when it announced it had saved a staggering $65 billion through a range of budget-cutting initiatives.
According to its website, DOGE attributes its savings to a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations or renegotiations, fraud and improper payment eliminations, grant cancellations, interest savings, regulatory cuts, workforce reductions, and programmatic changes.
However, the accuracy of these massive savings claims has been widely questioned. Critics say the website is “riddled with mistakes,” making it difficult to verify the figures.
“The DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars,” The New York Post reported in February, “but its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group, which has recently gained access to sensitive government payment systems.”
ABC News similarly reported that independent verification of DOGE’s savings is virtually impossible, echoing concerns about the group’s transparency and accountability.
Now, in a quiet but notable move, DOGE has removed nearly $1 billion from its reported savings total. As reported by NOTUS, approximately $962 million in previously claimed cuts were deleted from the site on Tuesday, April 15. The agency also reportedly altered hundreds of other entries to inflate individual savings figures.
The sudden and silent revision adds further fuel to growing doubts about DOGE’s operations—and its leadership under one of the most polarizing figures in tech and politics.
.jpg)
Elon Musk seen sporting a ‘DOGE’ t-shirt in March (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
The publication also noted that despite DOGE’s pledge to be transparent about its savings and where they were coming from, the website wasn’t updated from the end of March through to April 14.
April 14 remains the last time the site was updated at the time of writing, with the website saying DOGE has now saved $155 billion — working out to be over $900 per American taxpayer.
NOTUS also reports that nearly 650 grants and dozens of contracts and leases have been scrubbed from the DOGE website over the past several weeks.
Musk was brought in by Donald Trump to help run DOGE (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
As well as listing how much its saved, DOGE has an ‘Agency Efficiency Leaderboard’.
On this, it shows the Department of Health and Human Services being in the top spot for the most savings, while the least savings have been made from the Department of Commerce.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has previously addressed people’s criticism of DOGE and said that ‘rogue bureaucrats and activist judges attempting to undermine this effort are only subverting the will of the American people’.
