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GAO finds Elon Musk's DOGE inflated claims of $110 billion in savings for federal government

The nonpartisan watchdog found Elon Musk's DOGE didn't cut as much federal spending as it claimed and that it fell far short of its promised $2 trillion.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found inflated claims by Elon Musk's DOGE regarding $110 billion in savings for the federal government. The report, published Thursday, revealed multiple issues with the transparency and reliability of the savings reported by DOGE, including contracts, grants, and leases. DOGE had claimed to terminate 13,476 contracts but only fulfilled termination actions on 10,973 of them, leaving 2,503 contracts unaddressed.

DOGE had also overstated savings from lease cuts, reporting $113 million in savings when the actual total was $53.5 million. The GAO's review, requested by Senators Gary Peters and Richard Blumenthal, found that DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" lacked data quality and other limitations, making it an unreliable source of information. The report came as a result of the administration's cuts in government spending with little notice to agencies and hundreds of thousands of job losses.

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