DOGE Said It Cut $232 Million From Social Security Budget. It Was Only About Half a Million.
The cut, an anti-trans attack, was the latest example of confusion sown by bold claims that wither under scrutiny.
The “Department of Government Efficiency” claimed to have saved the American taxpayer nearly $232 million by canceling an IT contract for the Social Security Administration.
They were only off by about $231 million.
In fact, the government cut only $560,000, a paltry savings generated by yet another Trump administration anti-trans attack: the elimination of a project to develop an “X” gender marker for the agency’s internal databases. The Social Security Administration Wednesday confirmed the discrepancy between the DOGE claims and the actual total, which was first uncovered by The Intercept.
DOGE’s mixed-up math came as no surprise to Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, who testified before the House DOGE subcommittee last week about the shortcomings of the Elon Musk effort.
“This, to me, is just part and parcel of the amateur-hour nature of what DOGE is doing,” he told The Intercept. “They’re going to destroy more than they help. It’s absolutely counterproductive.”
“They’re going to destroy more than they help.”
When Musk’s “Department of Governmental Efficiency” — officially the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization — was first announced in November, it seemed like little more than a stunt. Immediately following Trump’s inauguration, however, the initiative sprang into action with murky processes and unclear outcomes. The Social Security contract snafu is just the latest example of confusion spread by Musk and DOGE as they boast of big cuts that vanish upon closer inspection.
On Monday, in response to criticisms from Democrats that the entity was not producing evidence to back up Musk’s extravagant claims of success, DOGE first posted its “wall of receipts,” an effort billed as follow-through on promises of transparency.
The rollout since then has been anything but smooth. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that one claim of having saved $8 billion by axing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract was wildly incorrect, since the underlying contract only amounted to $8 million.
On Wednesday, other media outlets such as CNN picked apart DOGE’s claim to have saved $1.9 billion from USAID contracts — the hypothetical maximum of contracts that have so far only cost the government $55 million over several years.
The Cut That Wasn’t
The mislabeling of savings from cuts to the Social Security Administration stem from apparent confusion — or misdirection by DOGE — around a massive IT contract with Leidos, a Fortune 500 company that also contracts for defense and intelligence agencies.
Since 2018, Leidos has billed $1.5 billion to the Social Security Administration through an overarching contract that currently has a ceiling of $1.9 billion.
On the surface, the contract’s goals of upgrading Social Security software systems seem to align with Musk’s stated concerns about outdated technology.
Still, DOGE claimed that it had taken a hatchet to the contract, in the process slashing $231,864,794 in government spending.
The actual savings were limited to the funds allocated to the Gender X Marker project, and were orders of magnitude smaller: According to a Social Security spokesperson, DOGE snipped a grand total of $560,000. Somehow, by the time that cut appeared on the “wall of receipts,” the amount it purported to save the government had ballooned by hundreds of millions.
“The task order referenced on the DOGE receipt website includes numerous IT development efforts, one of which was Social Security’s former Gender X Marker project,” said the spokesperson, Darren Lutz. “While the overarching task order was not terminated, we continue to assess and identify other projects under this task order that may be cancelled or streamlined to create further cost savings.”
The cancellation of the Gender X Marker project was first reported earlier this month, when DOGE claimed that it would save over $1 million. DOGE said at the time that the project was eliminated in line with Trump’s executive order stating the government would only recognize “two sexes, male and female” — a frequent right-wing anti-trans talking point that has no grounding in biological science.
In response to questions about the Social Security contract from The Intercept, a White House spokesperson gave a general defense of Musk’s work.
“DOGE has already identified billions of dollars in savings for American taxpayers,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt, “and President Trump will continue to direct this effort until our government is truly for the people, and by the people.”
Attacks on Social Security
DOGE’s “receipts” about the Social Security Administration contract came as its co-creator, Musk, began spreading false claims about the crucial old-age program, alarming Democrats who saw his jawboning as a prelude to benefit cuts.
Congressional Democrats say they are alarmed in particular by DOGE’s attempts to access recipient data, which prompted the agency’s acting administrator to leave her job over the weekend.
Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., said he had yet to see meaningful information about what DOGE has been up to.
“They seem to be operating with impunity under the leadership of an unelected, unaccountable billionaire,” he said. “Elon Musk’s companies are supported by $15 billion in government contracts, yet he is looking at slashing Americans’ hard-earned benefits to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy.”
For Hedtler-Gaudette, of the Project on Government Oversight, the list of supposed savings on the DOGE “wall of receipts” had created more questions than answers. The list contains little more than a bare-bones contract description, a savings figure, and a link to a federal procurement website.
“We don’t have any of that additional context or analysis,” he said. “We just have to take their word for it.”
“I don’t think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.”