Did DOGE Take Credit for Spending Cuts Related to President Carter’s Death?

Following the 2024 election, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy announced that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would “cut the federal government down to size” through “regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” DOGE has been busy since the inauguration. It has sought access to the private data of taxpayers and social security beneficiaries.  It has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development by placing employees on administrative leave. Whether these layoffs and cuts will lead to greater efficiency has yet to be determined. In the meantime, DOGE has flaunted these cost-cutting measures, including by publishing on its website a long list of the purported savings it has secured.

Since its inception, critics have raised concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding DOGE. Few knew whether the entity would operate as a private think tank, an advisory committee, or a federal agency. The lack of transparency triggered lawsuits under the Federal Advisory Committee Act on inauguration day. The executive order establishing DOGE—by simply renaming the U.S. Digital Service—only produced further confusion about DOGE’s composition and mission. Initial word of its activities has mostly come from civil servants in the agencies it infiltrates.

The shroud surrounding DOGE and Elon Musk leaves the public wondering: What is DOGE actually doing?

These concerns have persisted despite assertions from Musk—the only founder remaining within the administration—that DOGE acts with complete transparency. On Feb. 11, Musk gave a press conference with President Trump in the Oval Office, where the tech billionaire stated:

We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.

Oddly, however, DOGE’s efforts at transparency have only sown greater confusion about the agency and its activities. Musk and the General Services Administration (GSA) did not respond to a request for comment regarding Musk’s involvement and some of the claims on DOGE’s website.

Consider the role of Musk himself. For weeks, the public was left wondering whether Musk was acting in his private capacity or as a public employee. Two weeks after the inauguration, the White House confirmed that Musk was hired as a special government employee. This alone raises transparency concerns because special government employees are subject to relaxed financial reporting and conflicts-of-interest requirements compared to ordinary federal employees. In this case, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the White House has informed the press that Musk will police his own conflicts of interest.

One might assume, however, that Musk’s employment resolves a separate question surrounding DOGE: Who is its administrator? The executive order states, “There shall be a [DOGE] Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff.” Reasonable minds may conclude that Musk—one of DOGE’s chief architects—is its administrator. Not so. On Feb. 17, the federal government filed an affidavit in a pending case to clarify Musk’s role. The affidavit explains that Musk is an employee of the White House Office—not DOGE or the DOGE Service Temporary Organization. It concludes, “Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.” The affidavit does not provide the name of the DOGE administrator. It also does not state whether that position is vacant. A bare minimum requirement of transparency is that the public be able to hold an agency’s leader accountable for the agency’s actions.

Then there is the big question: What has DOGE been doing? Its website purports to offer the answer. On a page titled “Savings,” DOGE claims that its “total estimated savings are $55 billion.” The page lists eight actions that DOGE has taken to achieve these savings: “fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.” The website promises to “upload all of this data in a digestible and fully transparent manner with clear assumptions.” To date, the data only describes one of these actions: cancelled contracts and leases.

Yet a brief glimpse of the data raises questions about its accuracy. One row describes a lease terminated for an “agency” called “Allowance to Former Presidents.” Additional information shows that the property is 7,682 square feet, costs $128,233 per year, and is in Atlanta, Georgia. The GSA maintains a database of property leased by the federal government. Cross-referencing the information on DOGE’s website with GSA’s database reveals that the federal government was leasing this property from “The Carter Center, Inc.” The Carter Center is a nonprofit organization founded by former President Carter, who died on Dec. 29, 2024.

The Former Presidents Act provides former presidents with certain post-presidency benefits. Subsection (c) of that Act says, “The Administrator of General Services shall furnish for each former President suitable office space appropriately furnished and equipped, as determined by the Administrator, at such place within the United States as the former President shall specify.” As one might expect, Carter’s office was located in the Carter Center, and GSA leased office space for Carter from the Carter Center.

DOGE is likely not responsible for the termination of GSA’s lease of the Carter Center. The benefits to Carter under the Former Presidents Act expired upon his death. We can debate whether the Former Presidents Act is good policy and whether the federal government should provide these sorts of benefits to former presidents. Yet DOGE did not produce these “savings” listed on its website.

One possible explanation for why the Carter Center appears on DOGE’s website relates to how DOGE acquires its data. For the most part, the data on DOGE’s website can be downloaded on other agencies’ websites. For example, DOGE provides data about the workforce in various agencies. One can download over 20 years’ worth of quarterly data on federal employees from the Office of Personnel (OPM) management. Frankly, the dashboard provided by OPM provides better information about the workforce than DOGE’s website. Government data is readily available to anyone who might want it, including others who work with and for the government. DOGE appears to be repackaging publicly-available data and displaying it on its website.

A separate line item appears to overstate the value of one of the savings. That item says DOGE canceled a contract of almost $8 billion with D&G Support Services for services provided to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Investigative reporting from the New York Times revealed that the contract was valued at only $8 million. The New York Times explained, “The $7,992 billion mistake was discovered simply because it was the first item The Upshot reviewed, after sorting the list by the savings amount.” Reviewing other line items for inaccuracies will take additional time.

These potentially misleading line items raise concerns that the data provided by DOGE may not accurately describe what the agency does or how much it has saved. If a more comprehensive audit reveals similar inaccuracies, keeping this data up could create a false impression for the public that DOGE has accomplished meaningful spending cuts. DOGE did not terminate at least some of the contracts and leases listed on its website. Even if DOGE played an active role in terminating some of these contracts, it may be overstating the value of its cuts.

The federal government generally terminates contracts and leases for benign and boring reasons. It receives goods and services from many private companies, and it regularly negotiates and terminates contracts with private companies. Simply put: Some spending cuts likely reflect business as usual.

Musk has touted DOGE’s transparency. Much of its “transparency,” however, is political theater. DOGE has not offered a meaningful explanation of what it is doing and why it is doing it. The fact that the media and the public have come to rely on leaks from civil servants about DOGE’s activities underscores this problem. If Musk truly wants an organization that is more transparent than any other organization, DOGE can start by updating its website to accurately reflect which spending cuts are attributable to it. Such transparency will make it easier for the public to hold DOGE accountable for its actions.