The Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan federal watchdog that audits government programs on behalf of Congress, has concluded that the Department of Government Efficiency significantly overstated its claimed savings from federal cost-cutting efforts. The GAO found that billions of dollars in figures publicized by DOGE did not correspond to verified reductions in actual government expenditures.

DOGE, the advisory body established early in the Trump administration and closely associated with Elon Musk, had publicized large cumulative savings figures as evidence of its effectiveness in shrinking the size of the federal government. The GAO's review found that a substantial portion of those figures were inflated, based on accounting methods that did not align with standard federal budgetary practice.

The report does not dispute that some spending reductions took place, but it challenges the scale of the savings as presented publicly by DOGE. Auditors found instances where the same cuts were counted multiple times, projected savings were treated as realized savings, and canceled contracts were included even when obligations had already been fulfilled.

The findings arrive as the administration continues to tout government downsizing as a central economic achievement. Critics in Congress have used the GAO's conclusions to argue that the efficiency drive caused significant disruption to federal agencies and services while delivering far less fiscal benefit than claimed. Supporters of the initiative maintain that even adjusted figures represent meaningful progress in reducing government overhead.

The GAO report is expected to fuel continued congressional scrutiny of DOGE's methodology and its broader impact on the federal workforce and agency operations.