The federal government’s spending-cut tracker was meant to make savings easy to see. GAO’s review says key figures need far more context before policymakers or the public can rely on them.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, posted estimated government savings on its Wall of Receipts beginning February 17, 2025. But the Government Accountability Office said in an August 2026 report that the Wall of Receipts contained inaccuracies and unsupported claims within the $110 billion in savings it reported as of July 7, 2026 from federal contracts, grants and leases.
GAO’s finding matters because the figure has served as a public shorthand for DOGE’s cost-cutting effort. The watchdog agency did not say every listed saving was invalid; it said the site often did not provide enough information to verify the calculations, and in some cases recorded savings that were not actually achieved.
The $110 billion claim under review
GAO examined Wall of Receipts entries covering January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026. During that period, the site listed savings tied to terminated or changed contracts, grants and leases.
The review came against a large spending backdrop. Federal agencies obligated more than $2 trillion for contracts, grants and leases in fiscal year 2025, according to GAO. That scale helps explain why even a relatively small number of flawed entries can distort public understanding of what has been saved.
DOGE was established in January 2025, following executive actions aimed at reshaping federal spending. Its public-facing Wall of Receipts launched less than a month later as a way to show the administration’s claimed results.
Public dashboards can be useful accountability tools. They can also create a false sense of precision when a large dollar total is displayed without the assumptions, timing and contract-level details needed to evaluate it.
GAO found the math hard to verify
The central problem identified by GAO was not simply that some individual figures were wrong. It was that DOGE did not adequately explain how it derived many of the figures in the first place.
For contracts, GAO said DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with contracts listed as terminated. That leaves a gap between the process described publicly and the process reflected in the reported results.
The grant data presented an even larger verification problem. GAO said it lacked enough information to verify the method used to calculate 96% of DOGE-reported grant savings.
Lease savings were also missing a clear explanation of how they had been calculated. A termination notice, planned reduction or expiring agreement is not automatically the same thing as money that the government will avoid spending. The distinction depends on the terms of the agreement, whether services continue elsewhere and what costs remain after a change.
Some listed savings predated DOGE
GAO identified a separate issue with leases listed on the Wall of Receipts. Of 264 leases marked for termination, 108 had already been in the process of being terminated before DOGE was established.
Those 108 leases represented about $15.3 million of the $53.5 million in lease savings reported on the site, GAO said. Including them in DOGE’s total may imply that the entity initiated savings that were already underway.
GAO also found that $113 million in reported savings for the 264 leases was inaccurate. The different totals reflect the complications involved in translating lease actions into a single savings number: a lease may have been identified for termination, may already have been headed toward closure, or may have a reported figure that does not match the underlying records.
The issue is not merely semantic. If a public tracker counts actions that would have occurred anyway, it becomes difficult to separate savings caused by a new policy from savings that were already expected.
A $1.7 billion example with no savings
One contract reviewed by GAO illustrates why status details matter as much as a headline number. DOGE reported $1.7 billion in savings connected to a Defense Health Agency information-technology services contract covering more than 700 military treatment facilities worldwide.
GAO said DOGE initially identified that contract for termination. But the contract was ultimately not terminated, and no action was taken to reduce its scope, value or funding.
In that case, GAO concluded that no savings were achieved. The example does not establish that every contract entry on the Wall of Receipts was similarly flawed, but it shows the risk of treating an announced target or preliminary proposal as a completed budget result.
Supporters of aggressive spending reviews may argue that identifying a potentially unnecessary contract is itself valuable. GAO’s point is narrower and more practical: a website claiming savings should distinguish between opportunities identified, reductions planned and money actually saved.
Transparency is the report’s main demand
GAO said the Wall of Receipts included some information about the data and sources behind its numbers, but not enough disclosure about data-quality limitations. Federal reporting practices, the agency noted, call for government websites to make known limitations clear to users.
The watchdog recommended that the Executive Office of the President, through the U.S. DOGE Service, ensure that known data-quality problems and limitations are prominently displayed on the Wall of Receipts.
That recommendation stops short of prescribing a new savings formula or declaring the entire tracker unusable. Instead, it focuses on a basic disclosure standard: people using the numbers should be able to see how they were calculated, where the underlying data are incomplete and whether an entry represents an estimate or a realized result.
GAO said the Wall of Receipts had not been updated with added methodological explanations or data-limitations disclosures since its initial launch. As of July 7, 2026, the webpage remained live.
DOGE did not answer GAO’s requests
GAO said U.S. DOGE Service officials did not respond to its requests for information or interviews. The service also did not provide comments on the final report.
That nonresponse limited GAO’s ability to determine why the site did not disclose known data issues when it launched or later. It also means the report does not include DOGE’s own detailed explanation for the calculation choices the auditors questioned.
The unresolved question is whether the Wall of Receipts will be revised to show clearer methods, corrected entries and distinctions between projected and realized savings. Until then, GAO’s report provides an important caution for anyone citing the $110 billion total: it is a reported estimate, not a fully verified accounting of federal money saved.
For a program built around efficiency and transparency, the credibility of the ledger may now depend less on the size of the number than on DOGE’s willingness to show the work behind it.
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