DOGE latest: Nearly 40% of canceled contracts may save no money, data shows
Fed workers suing Elon Musk over 'five things' email
The Washington Examiner's Tiana Lowe Doescher joins LiveNOW's Andrew Craft to discuss top White House headlines, including Elon Musk's email to federal workers demanding a response on what they accomplished last week.
Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Elon Musk’s DOGE are expected to produce no savings, according to the Trump administration’s own data.
What is DOGE?
DOGE stands for the Department of Government Efficiency.
FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump appear during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Big picture view:
The department was implemented by President Donald Trump and is run by billionaire businessman Elon Musk. Its main task is to cut and organize spending within the federal government.
DOGE savings
By the numbers:
DOGE has published an initial list of 1,125 contracts terminated in recent weeks in efforts to save money.
DOGE estimates the savings around $65 billion, as of Feb. 24, 2025.
Dig deeper:
The agency attributes the savings to "a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancelations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancelations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings."
The other side:
Nearly 40% of the contracts canceled - 417 of them - aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration's own data shows.
That’s usually because the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased - and in many cases has already done so. The canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services.
The 417 contracts in question have a total value of $478 million.
What's next:
Musk and President Trump will continue their efforts to cut back spending within the federal government.
The jobs of countless federal employees could be in limbo this week after Musk’s email directive to explain their accomplishments or risk being fired.
Hours after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management had directed agencies that responses to its email were optional, Musk again threatened federal workers in a post on X, his social media platform.
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The Source: Information in this article was taken from DOGE’s "Wall of Receipts", as researched by The Associated Press. Background information on DOGE was taken from previous FOX Television Station reportings. This story was reported from Detroit.