The math whizzes at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claim to have saved taxpayers an estimated $55 billion through a series of cost-cutting measures since President Trump took office last month.
DOGE touted the estimate, current as of Monday, at the launch of its public-facing website portal, saying the number represented “a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”
The portal is scheduled to be updated twice per week as DOGE shifts to a “real-time” reporting mechanism, the department added.
The revamped website includes a “Wall of Receipts” that lists hundreds of government contracts and other expenses alongside the savings DOGE garnered — such as by cutting government subscriptions to Politico Pro and other news outlets.
It’s unclear on which budget window the estimate is based. On an annual basis, the US government had a budget of roughly $6.75 trillion with an estimated deficit of about $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024, which ended Sept. 30 last year.
Thus far, DOGE estimates that its top savings have come through cuts at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).
USAID, which oversaw foreign development funding, was one of DOGE’s most prominent targets. The Trump administration has taken steps to effectively fold it into the State Department, though that is subject to litigation.
Meanwhile, the White House has made plain it wants to abolish the Department of Education outright and DOGE claims to have made nearly $1 billion worth of cuts to it.
Trump announced DOGE last November shortly after his 2024 election victory and said he was tapping tech mogul Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as co-heads, though the latter stepped back from the role to pursue a run for governor of Ohio.
DOGE has come under intense legal scrutiny from government workers and Democrats who have accused Musk of having conflicts of interest due to his companies’ various contracts with the government.
Critics argue that DOGE and the Trump administration have limited power to reduce spending and cannot eliminate agencies without Congress.
Early on, DOGE obtained access to the Treasury Department’s vast payment systems that handle trillions of dollars worth of expenses to identify areas of waste and inefficiencies.
DOGE claimed Monday that its team discovered an estimated $4.7 trillion in payments that did not have a key tracking code, which it alleged made properly monitoring the transactions “almost impossible.”
Last Friday, a federal judge extended a block on DOGE’s access to those key systems amid litigation from 19 Democratic state attorneys general.
Members of the DOGE team have also reportedly sought access to the Internal Revenue Service’s taxpayer data.
Musk has also made clear that he intends to hunt for fraud and abuse in entitlement programs such as Social Security, whose main trust fund is projected to run dry at some point in the 2030s.
Over the weekend, a leading official at the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, reportedly stepped down due to a feud over DOGE’s push for access to critical data.
Last week, Trump signed an executive order bolstering DOGE’s power and requiring government agencies to only hire one federal worker for every four who leave.
“They started off with 12,” Trump said of the department last week. “I call them 12 geniuses. They started off with 12, and they went to 20 and 25 and now they’re up to almost 100 people joining to help them.”
The Post reached out to a DOGE spokesperson for comment.
