DOGE's "wall of receipts" riddled with inaccuracies, GAO says

The Department of Government Efficiency's much-publicized "Wall of Receipts," which claimed to show billions in taxpayer savings, is riddled with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The congressional watchdog's findings, released Thursday, corroborate previous reporting that the department, often referred to as DOGE, significantly overstated its savings. As of July 7, 2026, the GAO found that $110 billion in claimed savings from slashed federal contracts, leases, and grants were either incorrect or lacked supporting evidence. For example, the GAO noted that 108 of the 264 leases DOGE claimed to have terminated were already in the process of being canceled before the department's inception in January 2025.

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Everyone supports rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but DOGE was a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people while doing real damage to the government's ability to serve them.

Further scrutiny revealed instances where DOGE reported savings from terminating a Pentagon Defense Health Agency IT contract, claiming $1.7 billion, but never actually followed through with termination or funding cuts. The GAO's investigation, requested by Democratic senators, covered the period from January 20, 2025, to July 7, 2026.

Democratic senators criticized the department's efforts as "slapdash and deceptive," accusing it of misleading the public, damaging the government's ability to function, and taking credit for ongoing work. The GAO also pointed to a lack of transparency, noting that DOGE did not provide sufficient information to verify savings calculations for 96 percent of reported grant savings and failed to disclose data limitations affecting the quality of its reported figures. The report recommended that DOGE provide more information on its savings calculation methodologies and disclose data limitations to be more useful to policymakers and the public.

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Elon Musk and the Trump administration claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate, took credit for work already underway, and refused to show its work, all while putting Americans' sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies.