U.S. federal agencies have terminated or descoped 95 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $2 billion over the previous four weeks, saving $757 million in taxpayer funds, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said in a March 14 post on X.
Terminated contracts include a $75,400 State Department media contract for “media monitoring services,” a $45.6 million Office of Personnel Management services contract for “talent acquisition support,” and a $98.5 million research contract from the Department of Education to “follow and study high school students throughout their high school careers.”
Another Education Department research contract worth $76.4 million for “how students and their families finance post-secondary education, and students’ persistence, attainment and workforce outcomes” was also terminated.
The cancellation of $2 billion worth of contracts comes after agencies terminated or descoped 273 contracts with a ceiling value of $5.1 billion for the four weeks prior to Feb. 14, DOGE said in an X post. These cancellations saved taxpayers $1.4 billion.
Terminated contracts included a $10.2 million Department of War administrative management contract for “outward mindset training” and a $11,000 consulting contract from the department for “social indicators research.”
According to the DOGE website, the initiative—which started at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term—has saved $215 billion as of Jan. 1, which amounts to $1,335.40 per taxpayer.
The savings were generated via a combination of measures such as contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, and asset sales.
The Department of Health and Human Services is listed as the agency that has generated the most savings, followed by the General Services Administration, Social Security Administration, Office of Personnel Management, and the Small Business Administration.
Among some of the “strangest, most baffling uses” of government funding uncovered by DOGE include a $620,000 grant for adapting an “LGB+ inclusive teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys,” an $814,000 grant for “a daily diary examination of the influence of intersectional stigma on blood pressure,” and an $801,000 grant linked to “structural racism and discrimination in older men’s health inequities.”
Meanwhile, former DOGE head Elon Musk, who left the initiative in May, said in a December interview on the “Katie Miller Podcast,” that he believes the agency has been “somewhat successful” in fulfilling its objectives.
DOGE stopped a lot of funding that “just made no sense,” and which was “just entirely wasteful,” Musk said.
President Donald Trump took another measure to combat fraud by signing an executive order on March 16 to officially create an anti-fraud task force headed by Vice President JD Vance, with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson serving as co-chair.
Officials estimate that over $300 billion is lost by government programs annually to fraudsters. During the signing ceremony, Trump said the work of the task force could return hundreds of billions of dollars to American taxpayers.
