By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
The Department of Government Efficiency task force says it has helped save around $175 billion and assisted in the termination of more than 25,000 federal contracts and grants, according to an update on Saturday.
The amount of savings, according to DOGE, is about $1,056 per U.S. taxpayer, which was accomplished via the termination of federal contracts, grants and leases. An update to DOGE’s website in mid-May said it had helped save $170 billion.
According to the current update of its website, approximately 10,871 government contracts, 15,149 grants, and 494 leases have been terminated.
The “most savings” have been achieved at the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Labor, DOGE said.
Last week, DOGE wrote that agencies canceled another 81 “wasteful contracts” with a potential value of around $368 million, to save roughly $244 million. Days before that, it wrote that it completed a “major cleanup” of Social Security records of 12.3 million people aged 120 or older, to mark them as deceased.
DOGE was officially established in January by President Donald Trump and tasked with rooting out what the White House calls fraud, waste and abuse within the federal government amid record national debt.
While tech billionaire Elon Musk was effectively in charge of the group, the Tesla CEO has since returned to work full-time on his business empire amid slumping sales at his electric car company Tesla.
Tesla sales across Europe plunged by nearly half last month amid growth in the electric car market on the continent, according to a report issued Tuesday.
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said in its report that sales of Tesla vehicles in 32 European countries dropped by 49% in April to 7,261. In comparison, 14,228 Tesla cars were sold in April 2024, the report said.
Over the past weekend, Musk confirmed in a post on the social media platform X, which he also owns, that he is currently working full-time at his companies.
“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out,” Musk wrote in an X post on Saturday.
Earlier this month, Musk also said that it’s up to Congress and federal agencies to act on whether they want to keep up with DOGE’s savings goals because he only serves in an advisory role with no “formal power.”
“We’re not the dictators of the government. We are the advisers. And so we can advise, and the progress we’ve made thus far, I think, is incredible,” the Tesla CEO told a forum in Qatar on May 20.
“The DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general,” he said. Previously, Musk said that he wants the group’s audits to bring about $1 trillion in federal spending cuts.
Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to back Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republicans last year, also said last week he will cut his political spending substantially, signaling that he is shifting his attention back to his companies amid growing investor concerns.
Meanwhile, DOGE has faced some setbacks in a handful of court cases, including one that sought to limit its access to Social Security Administration records. The Trump administration this month petitioned the Supreme Court to block a lower court order that prevented DOGE from accessing those records.
Democrats have been largely critical of DOGE’s effort. On April 29, they released a tracker that accused Musk and the Trump administration of blocking some $400 billion in federal funds that they say were appropriated by Congress.
At the time, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrats on the appropriations committees, said a “vast, illegal funding freeze” is “hurting people in every ZIP code in America.”
“Instead of investing in the American people, President Trump is ignoring our laws and ripping resources away,” the lawmakers said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
