{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-and-peters-release-gao-report-finding-doge-misled-americans-about-claimed-savings", "Blumenthal & Peters Release GAO Report Finding DOGE Misled Americans About Claimed Savings", "2026-08-07", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "Senate", "CT", "Richard Blumenthal", "B001277", "www.blumenthal.senate.gov", "blumenthal", "https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press", "scraper", "[Hartford, CT] \u2014 U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finding that DOGE\u2019s claims of massive taxpayer savings on its \u201cWall of Receipts\u201d were severely overstated and plagued by unreliable data, unexplained calculations, and a lack of transparency.\n\n\u201cThe Trump Administration has used DOGE to recklessly slash government programs, ransacking critical services and resources and proudly displaying supposed \u2018savings\u2019 on its Wall of Receipts,\u201d said Senator Blumenthal. \u201cGAO\u2019s report, though, reveals data quality concerns and a lack of clarity regarding how savings were calculated, making DOGE\u2019s findings unreliable and unclear. My report with the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last year showed that DOGE was clearly never about efficiency or saving the American taxpayer money\u2014wasting at least $21.7 billion at the time while the Trump Administration cut health care, nutrition assistance, and emergency services. This GAO report underscores the need for increased transparency and accountability from the Trump Administration so the American public can better understand DOGE\u2019s activities as the organization guts vital government programs.\u201d\n\n\u201cEveryone supports rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, but DOGE was a slapdash and deceptive effort that misled the American people while doing real damage to the government\u2019s ability to serve them,\u201d Senator Peters said. \u201cElon Musk and the Trump Administration claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate, took credit for work already underway, and refused to show its work, all while putting Americans\u2019 sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies.\u201d\n\nThe GAO report, requested by Blumenthal and Peters in June 2025, finds that DOGE failed to provide enough information to verify 96 percent of its claimed grant savings. GAO also found that no termination action had been taken on 2,503 contracts associated with $27.4 billion in claimed savings, and two-thirds of DOGE\u2019s purported contract savings were unverifiable or did not follow stated methodology. Of the 264 leases DOGE identified for termination, 108 were already in the termination process.\n\nSince last year, the Trump Administration has been forced to reverse numerous staff purges and contract cancellations carried out by DOGE after the cuts created staffing shortages and serious operational problems\u2014further exposing the recklessness of DOGE\u2019s approach.\n\nLast year, a Blumenthal report found that DOGE generated at lease $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government between January 20 and July 18, 2025. This included $14.8 billion through its Deferred Resignation Program for paying approximately 200,000 employees not to work for up to eight months, $6.1 billion for over 100,000 employees who have involuntarily separated from federal service or who remain on prolonged periods of leave pending separation who were paid not to do their jobs for extended periods of time, and $263 million in lost interest and fee income at the Department of Energy due to dozens of loan freezes.\n\nThe report is available here.\n\n-30-", 1, "2026-08-08T05:41:38Z", "2026-08-08T05:43:24Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-and-peters-release-gao-report-finding-doge-misled-americans-about-claimed-savings"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.798687968403101, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}