BBC Verify<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – set up to cut US government spending – claims to have saved, on average, more than $10bn a week since President Trump entered office.<\/p>\n “We’re talking about almost $200bn and rising fast,” Trump told the BBC when talking about Mr Musk’s cost-cutting drive on 23 April.<\/p>\n Doge’s website says it is focusing on cancelling contracts, grants and leases put in place by previous administrations, as well as tackling fraud and reducing the government workforce.<\/p>\n BBC Verify has looked at the agency’s biggest claimed savings, examining the figures and speaking to experts.<\/p>\n Our analysis found that behind some of the large numbers, there is a lack of evidence to back them up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In October, Mr Musk pledged to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal government budget. He subsequently halved this target and on 10 April talked about making savings of $150bn from “cutting fraud and waste” by the end of the next financial year in 2026. <\/p>\n The US federal budget for the last financial year was $6.75tn.<\/p>\n Doge publishes a running total of its estimated savings on its website – which stood at $160bn the last time the site was updated on 20 April.<\/a><\/p>\n However, less than 40% of this figure is broken down into individual savings.<\/p>\n We downloaded the data from the Doge website on 23 April and added up the total claimed savings from contracts, grants and leases. <\/p>\n Our analysis found only about half of these itemised savings had a link to a document or other form of evidence. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n US media has also highlighted some accounting errors, including Doge mistakenly claiming to have saved $8bn from cancelling an immigration contract which in fact had a total value of $8m<\/a>.<\/p>\n Doge says it is working to upload all receipts in a “digestible and transparent manner” and that, as of 20 April, it has posted receipts “representing around 30% of all total savings”. It also lists some receipts as being “unavailable for legal reasons”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n BBC Verify examined the four largest savings listed on the Doge website which had receipts attached.<\/p>\n The department claims these add up to $8.3bn, but after examining the evidence provided and speaking to people familiar with federal contracts, this figure appears to be overstated.<\/p>\n For three of the savings, Doge links to documents on the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). This is a database which records contracts given out by the US government.<\/p>\n The documents show a contract’s start and end date, the maximum amount the government has agreed to spend, and how much of that has been spent.<\/p>\n David Drabkin, a federal contracts expert who helped develop the FPDS database, said the maximum figure listed should be treated with caution. <\/p>\n “FPDS does not reflect the actual paid price until some period of time after the contract has been completed and the contract actions have been recorded,” he says.<\/p>\n “For example, when buying research and development into a vaccine no one really knows how much that’s going to cost – so when a price is set, it’s not a definite price but rather an upper limit.”<\/p>\n So if Doge counts the maximum figure, that can represent projected spending over a number of years, rather than a direct saving from the country’s yearly spending.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Doge’s largest listed individual saving is $2.9bn. <\/p>\n It comes from cancelling a contract – which started in 2023 under President Biden<\/a> – for a facility in Texas to house up to 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children.<\/p>\n Doge appears to have taken the “total contract value” until 2028 – the end date listed – and subtracted the amount spent so far to get the $2.9bn figure. <\/p>\n But the contract was reviewed annually, meaning renewing it until 2028 was not guaranteed.<\/p>\n A source familiar with this contract – who spoke on condition of anonymity – told BBC Verify that Doge’s figure is “based on speculative, never-used figures” and that the actual spending depended on how many children were placed at the facility and the services they required.<\/p>\n “In truth, the government never incurred those costs and could never reach that ceiling amount. The real, documentable savings from early termination were approximately $153 million”, they estimated.<\/p>\n They say this figure comes from tallying up the $18m per month fixed running costs (for things like staffing and security at the facility) from February – when Doge announced the cut – to November – when the contract was subject to annual review.<\/p>\n They also told us that the site – which closed on the same day as the Doge announcement – never reached its maximum capacity of 3,000 children, and about 2,000 stayed at the Texas facility at its peak, before numbers fell significantly as border crossings decreased.<\/p>\n We contacted the Administration for Children and Families and the Department for Health and Human Services which awarded the contract but are yet to hear back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The second largest saving listed by Doge comes from cancelling a contract between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and an IT company called Centennial Technologies which it claims was worth $1.9bn.<\/p>\n The document<\/a> which Doge links to has a total contract value of $1.9bn and all of the other cost fields, including the amount already spent, are for $0.<\/p>\n However, Mr Drabkin told us this does not necessarily mean that nothing had been spent on the contract.<\/p>\n He said several government departments have poor recording keeping, meaning the amount spent during some contracts might not always be updated in a timely fashion.<\/p>\n The contract start date is listed as August 2024 and was estimated to run until 2031.<\/p>\n However, Centennial Technologies’ CEO told the New York Times<\/a> that the agreement had actually been cancelled last autumn during the Biden administration. <\/p>\n The company did not respond to our requests for further comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another IT contract, this time with the Department of Defense, is the third largest claimed saving.<\/p>\n Doge says $1.76bn was saved by cancelling a contract with an IT services company called A1FEDIMPACT. <\/p>\n On the contract document<\/a>, the total value is listed as $2.4bn. An online database of government contracts called Higher Gov<\/a> says this amount was the ceiling value.<\/p>\n Again, there is $0 recorded for the amount that had been spent at the time the contract was terminated.<\/p>\n It is unclear where Doge’s figure of $1.76bn comes from – we have asked the Pentagon and the supplier about it.<\/p>\n The fourth largest claimed saving of $1.75bn comes from cancelling a USAID grant to Gavi, a global health organisation, which campaigns to improve access to vaccines.<\/p>\n![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/6d01\/live\/bbf27870-21e6-11f0-9c65-a5c3dc449bf3.jpg.webp\")
BBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nHow does Doge report savings?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nWhat’s the evidence behind the biggest saving?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Reuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nWhat about the other big savings?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Getty<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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