Elon Musk’s cost-cutting drive, which the so-called “Receipt Wall” posted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boasts massive savings in federal budgets, has been billed as a proud public interface for the US government’s radical reforms.
Instead, like many of Musk’s unprecedented involvement with federal bureaucracy, the initiative has been plagued by mistake, confusion and obfuscation.
With the latest embarrassment that befalls the site, Doge secretly wiped out all five of its biggest items in the “receipt wall” after it became apparent that the much-vaunted “savings” were a very hot air.
The deletion, originally reported by the New York Times, took place on Tuesday without explanation. A White House spokesman will only say that Musk’s Slash and Burn Initiative has “identified billions of dollars in savings.”
Doge now claims it has managed to lose $65 billion from federal spending, rising sharply from its previous figure of $55 billion. However, itemized savings listed on the “Receipt Wall” have plummeted from $16.6 billion to $9.6 billion in deletion.
The “receipt wall” is the only element of public accountability offered by Musk, the richest man in the world, given a virtual Carte Blanche to investigate federal departments by Donald Trump. The web page is lined with straps saying, “People voted for a massive reform.”
What people have been delivered so far is to “save” the costs of immigration and customs enforcement, which are listed as worth $8 billion on the “receipt wall.” As the New York Times notes, the Immigration Bureau’s overall budget is around $8 billion. In fact, the cost savings should be correctly recorded at $8 million.
That slip on the accounting pen has disappeared from the Doge site. Among the other four large figures, the deleted “savings” have also been removed, bringing a three-cut cut of $655 million each to the USAID International Development Agency’s budget.
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It sounded impressive until revealed by CBS News.
The biggest of five missing “savings” was the $1.9 billion item listed as a Treasury cut. This was based on a contract that was cancelled last year, when Joe Biden was in the White House.
