Has DOGE really saved $55 billion?

Although the Department of Government Efficiency announced this week that it has saved U.S. taxpayers $55 billion, data reporting procedures at the federal government are making it impossible to know precisely how many taxpayer dollars DOGE has actually saved.

Critics quickly accused DOGE of inflating the value of contracts it deemed wasteful after the office said Wednesday on its website that the agency saved $55 billion through “a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”