GAO Questions DOGE’s Reported $110 Billion in Savings

A Government Accountability Office audit is challenging the reliability of the Department of Government Efficiency’s public savings ledger, finding that many of the $110 billion in estimated savings reported by DOGE could not be adequately verified.

GAO published and publicly released report GAO-26-108615 on August 6, 2026. The review examined savings data for contracts, grants and leases reported on DOGE’s Wall of Receipts from January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026. DOGE’s $110 billion figure was its own reported estimate, not a GAO-verified measure of federal spending reductions.

GAO found problems with DOGE’s methods

GAO said DOGE was not sufficiently transparent about how it calculated savings. For most reported contract savings, the watchdog found that DOGE did not use the methodology described on its website.

Grant claims presented a separate documentation problem. GAO said it lacked enough information to verify the method behind 96% of the reported grant savings. The Wall of Receipts also did not explain how savings from terminated leases were calculated.

GAO did not independently audit every item on the Wall of Receipts. Its review assessed DOGE’s methodologies and disclosures and examined selected contracts, grants and leases. The findings do not establish that every DOGE claim was false, but they show that the public ledger often did not provide enough supporting information to determine whether a reported cancellation produced an actual reduction in obligations, scope, funding or future spending.

Some lease terminations were already underway

GAO reviewed 264 leases listed by DOGE as terminated. The audit found that 108 were already in the process of being terminated when DOGE was established.

GAO attributed about $15.3 million of the $53.5 million in reported lease savings to those leases. A lease appearing on a termination list therefore does not necessarily mean the action was newly initiated by DOGE or that the full reported amount represents additional savings.

The finding illustrates why timing and documentation matter when agencies claim credit for reductions in federal spending. Congress, contractors and taxpayers need to know whether an action was newly initiated, already planned or simply recorded after the fact.

A $1.7 billion contract example

The audit identified a Defense Health Agency information-technology contract that DOGE listed as producing $1.7 billion in savings.

GAO found that the contract was not terminated and that its scope, value and funding were not reduced. The watchdog therefore concluded that no savings were achieved on that contract.

GAO presented the contract as a specific example from its review, not as proof that all contract entries on the Wall of Receipts were unsupported. The broader concern was whether the savings figures could be independently checked using the information DOGE made public.

What happens next

GAO issued one recommendation, and its status remained open. It called on the Executive Office of the President, through the U.S. DOGE Service, to prominently disclose known limitations in the quality of the data used for the savings ledger.

GAO said the U.S. DOGE Service did not provide comments or respond to requests for information and interviews during the review. As of July 7, 2026, the Wall of Receipts remained live without updates explaining its savings methodology or disclosing the data limitations identified by GAO.

For taxpayers, the practical question is not simply how many contracts, grants or leases appear on a cancellation list. It is whether those actions reduced actual federal obligations or future spending. Readers should watch for changes to the Wall of Receipts, agency responses, congressional scrutiny and documentation showing the amount of spending reductions ultimately realized.

Sources

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