DOGE claim it saved $8 billion by canceling an $8 million contract raises questions about its ‘wall of receipts’

CNN — Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency disclosed for the first time this week a snapshot of some of the government contracts it has canceled, claiming to have saved taxpayers about $55 billion. A CNN review of contracting data showed that about two-thirds of the total claimed savings from contracts listed on the DOGE site came from taking the maximum amount that could possibly have been spent on so-called “indefinite delivery” contracts like the questionable ICE contract — even if the government was unlikely to spend that much. One former federal contracting official called DOGE’s savings claims “completely disingenuous.” The website, DOGE.gov, lists more than 1,100 contracts that DOGE says it canceled, along with 97 government leases that are being terminated or not renewed, on what it describes as the “Wall of Receipts.” The contracts listed — which total about $16.5 billion in savings — are just a “subset” of all contract and lease cancellations the agency has overseen so far, with the publicly disclosed contracts accounting for about 20% of “overall DOGE savings,” according to the website. That seems to be based on a listing in the Federal Procurement Data System, a government contracting database: When the contract was first signed in 2022, its maximum total value was listed as $8 billion — roughly the same amount as ICE’s entire annual budget, according to the agency’s website. Overall, about two-thirds of the total savings claimed from contracts listed on the DOGE site — including the original $8 billion listed for the ICE contract — came from IDV contracts, with the savings amount relying on the maximum possible spending.