The DOGE deception

The official DOGE website says that its page detailing spending cuts was "last updated on April 20, 2025." In a technical sense, that is accurate. On April 20, 2025, the page was updated from claiming $155 billion in spending cuts to claiming $160 billion in spending cuts.

But the $5 billion in additional cuts appears to be pulled out of thin air. Nothing has been added to the "Wall of Receipts" that purports to itemize the canceled contracts, grants, and real estate leases that substantiate the cuts since at least April 15, 2025. Since then, the only thing that has changed is the topline number.

A typical user of the website can't know this. For example, there are over 8,000 alleged contract cancellations, and the site allows you to review them 10 at a time. The Musk Watch DOGE Tracker, however, scrapes the entire site weekly. We then compare that data with the data scraped the previous week. That process showed that, except for the larger claimed overall cuts, no other changes occurred on April 20.

The claimed overall cuts have never matched the itemized cuts listed on the DOGE website. Currently, just $61.5 billion in cuts have been itemized on the DOGE website. But Musk Watch's analysis of the underlying value of the canceled cuts, grants, and leases — based on the original government sources — shows there are just $12.6 billion in verifiable cuts.

While Musk set a goal of cutting $1 trillion annually, the $12.6 billion in verifiable cuts is spread over multiple years because many of the contracts and grants that were eliminated were scheduled to be paid out over multiple years. But even if the $12.6 billion in savings were realized in one year, it would represent just 0.173% of the total U.S. federal budget for fiscal year 2025.

This doesn't mean the cuts imposed by DOGE are not damaging. Cutting off funding for international efforts to combat malaria and HIV will not have a meaningful impact on the federal budget. But it could cost many people their lives.

The inefficacy of DOGE's campaign to reduce the budget deficit is evident in the data. A Wall Street Journal analysis earlier this month found that "spending since the [Trump] inauguration is $154 billion more than in the same period in 2024 during the administration of former President Joe Biden."

DOGE has pushed out thousands of government workers, but according to one expert cited by the Wall Street Journal, that could increase payroll costs because some "employees who had planned to retire or leave the federal government may have instead accepted a buyout and remained on payroll."

Nevertheless, Trump's political operation is using DOGE's budget cuts as a political fundraising tool. As MTN highlighted, the Trump campaign has been sending emails suggesting that Americans may receive $5,000 DOGE rebate checks.

Of course, DOGE has not generated any reduction in federal spending, much less a reduction that would finance a $5,000 "dividend check."

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The Musk Watch DOGE Tracker is a project of our new sister publication, Musk Watch. NPR covered our launch HERE. It features accountability journalism focused on one of the most powerful humans in history.

Today, we published a piece exposing how Musk has claimed one of his multi-billion-dollar companies is eligible for federal contracts reserved for small businesses. You can read it, starting at 7 AM Eastern, HERE.

It is free to sign up, so we hope you’ll give it a try and let us know what you think.

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