The contracts include an expensive Harvard course, and a roughly $490,000 USAID contract for Madagascar.
Over the past seven days, various government agencies have terminated 312 “wasteful contracts” with a ceiling value of $2.8 billion, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said in a June 26 post on the social media platform X.
The cancellation saves $470 million for the taxpayers, it said. Canceled contracts include a Department of Defense $286,000 “professional and management development contract for an ‘entrepreneurship course at Harvard University,’” and a $485,000 “USAID contract for a ‘senior general development advisor at USAID Madagascar.’”
According to the DOGE website, it has, thus far, saved an estimated $180 billion in government spending as of June 3, which comes to $1,118 per taxpayer.
The savings are the result of contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, grant cancellations, deletion of fraud and improper payments, asset sales, and workforce reductions.
Agencies that have accounted for the most of the $180 billion savings include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the Department of Education.
Some of the major cost-cutting initiatives include canceling $2.9 billion for the Department of the Interior for a refugee resettlement program, a $1.9 billion tech program at the Treasury, and a $1.7 billion grant program at USAID.
DOGE said it has also helped cut various programs it described as the “strangest, most baffling uses” of government funds.
This includes a $620,000 teen pregnancy prevention program aimed at “transgender boys,” a $20,000 grant for a gender equity program in math, a $250,000 grant for paid leave programs based on racial equity, and $10 million for “decolonizing” the curriculum under the Department of Education.
DOGE is operating under new leadership after Elon Musk exited from the initiative last month when his 130-day mandate as a special government employee expired.
On May 30, Musk and President Donald Trump appeared at the Oval Office, with the president crediting the entrepreneur for bringing “a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington.”
According to the White House, DOGE is currently being led by Amy Gleason, who was in charge of the U.S. Digital Service during the first Trump administration.
