A Government Accountability Office report published August 6, 2026 found that the Department of Government Efficiency overstated savings on its public "Wall of Receipts," and that more than a quarter of the contracts listed on the site lacked the identifying information needed to independently verify DOGE's claims.
Background
DOGE launched the Wall of Receipts to publicize savings from canceled contracts, grants and leases across the federal government. GAO's review, GAO-26-108615, covers Wall of Receipts data from DOGE's creation on January 20, 2025, through July 7, 2026, during which DOGE's public tally credited itself with $110.3 billion in total savings from contract, grant and lease actions — $61.02 billion, $49.21 billion and $113 million, respectively. DOGE's Temporary Organization, which carried out its termination actions, concluded July 4, 2026, but the Wall of Receipts remained live with no corrections since its last update on January 1, 2026, meaning the errors GAO documented were still on display to the public when the report came out.
GAO undertook the audit to test whether the savings figures DOGE published could be traced back to actual contract actions and to the methodology DOGE said it used to calculate them, examining each category separately against contract data from the Federal Procurement Data System, grant data from USAspending.gov, and lease data from GSA's lease-tracking system. DOGE did not respond to GAO's inquiries during the review and did not provide comments on a draft of the report, according to GAO.
Key Details
Of the 13,476 contracts listed on the Wall of Receipts, 27.8% — 3,751 contracts — lacked the identifying information, such as a contract number tied to a federal procurement record, that GAO needed to independently confirm the listing. More significantly, GAO found that just 43.2% of the dollar value of reported contract savings could be traced to contracts that were completely or partially terminated. The remaining, larger share of the claimed savings was tied to contracts that were not terminated at all, or whose status GAO could not determine because DOGE did not provide enough data to match them to procurement records.
GAO also checked whether DOGE followed the savings methodology it had publicly stated it used. It found DOGE applied that methodology to only 27.5% of reported contract savings — $16.8 billion, covering 7,710 of the listed contracts — while another 60.7% ($37 billion) relied on calculations GAO could not reconcile with DOGE's published approach, and the remaining 11.8% could not be evaluated because of missing contract identifiers.
The report cites specific examples. A Defense Health Agency IT-support contract was credited with $1.7 billion in savings even though, with DOGE's agreement, no action was ever taken to terminate, reduce or defund it. An Air Force Base Infrastructure Modernization contract was listed as generating $4 billion in savings; GAO found the Air Force actually reduced the contract's value by $3.75 billion, a 30% cut from its original $12.5 billion value — a $250 million gap Air Force contracting officials could not explain.
Lease savings showed a similar pattern. DOGE's Wall of Receipts displayed a total of $113 million in savings from 264 leases identified for termination, but that figure was inaccurate on its own terms: the individual lease entries on the site actually summed to $53.5 million. Checking those entries against GSA's lease-tracking data, GAO determined actual savings were $31.8 million — an overstatement of more than $80 million against DOGE's original claim. Of the $53.5 million recorded in individual listings, $15.3 million, or 29%, came from 108 leases GSA had already been terminating before DOGE was established, meaning DOGE claimed credit for savings already underway independent of its actions.
Grant savings were the hardest category for GAO to verify at all. For 96% of DOGE-reported grant savings, GAO could not confirm how the figure was calculated. Part of the problem, GAO found, is structural: USAspending.gov, the database DOGE itself cited as its data source, does not include the total grant values that DOGE's own stated methodology requires to calculate savings.
GAO issued a single recommendation as a result of the review: that the Executive Office of the President, through the U.S. DOGE Service, prominently disclose the known data-quality issues and limitations on the Wall of Receipts itself, so the public isn't relying on figures GAO could not verify without a caveat attached.
What It Means for Contractors
Contractors whose awards appear on the Wall of Receipts — whether flagged as terminated, reduced, or otherwise contributing to DOGE's savings total — have reason to check their own listings against the actual status of their contract files. GAO's finding that only 43.2% of reported contract savings could be traced to contracts that were actually terminated means a company could see its own contract publicly credited by DOGE as a savings source when, per the contracting officer's record, no termination, reduction or defunding action was ever taken.
That matters beyond reputation: savings figures tied to specific contracts and agencies have been cited in budget and appropriations debates as evidence of executive-branch cost-cutting, and an inaccurate public record tying a contract number to a termination that didn't happen could affect a company competing for follow-on work or demonstrating a stable government relationship to investors or lenders.
With DOGE's Temporary Organization concluded and the Wall of Receipts unchanged since January 1, 2026, contractors have no clear, active channel to petition for a correction to an individual listing. GAO's recommendation is limited to a disclosure requirement — flagging that the site's numbers carry known limitations — rather than a wholesale correction of the underlying figures. Contractors who believe their contract, grant or lease was misrepresented should document the award's actual status through their contracting officer, since the public listing itself, per GAO's audit, cannot be assumed to reflect the true termination status of any given contract.
The lease findings are a particular caution for facilities and real-property contractors: GAO found $15.3 million of the lease savings DOGE claimed credit for came from leases GSA had already been in the process of terminating before DOGE existed, meaning a company that had already agreed to exit a federal lease through the normal termination process may find that exit credited to DOGE on the public record. Firms in that position have grounds to raise the discrepancy if it affects how their past performance is characterized in future source-selection discussions. With GAO's recommendation aimed at disclosure rather than at correcting individual records, contractors should not expect the underlying dollar figures to be revised soon — but the report gives contracting officers and industry associations a documented basis for challenging specific line items if they surface in a protest or a public dispute over an agency's cost-cutting record.
