The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, together amounting to about $16 billion in savings itemized on a new “wall of receipts” on its website.
Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.
The $7.992 billion mistake was discovered simply because it was the first item The Upshot reviewed, after sorting the list by the savings amount.
By Wednesday morning, DOGE had updated its list to show $8 million in savings, though it did not acknowledge the error or explain how it might affect its calculation of total money saved, which remained unchanged.
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