- The Department of Government Efficiency said it cancelled $420 million in contracts in 80 hours.
- If true, that puts DOGE on track to cut about $67 billion per year — 3% of Musk’s original goal.
- Elon Musk, who is leading the group, has a known love of the number 420.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency announced Friday in a post on X that in 80 hours, it had cancelled approximately $420 million worth of current or impending government contracts, as well as two leases.
According to Business Insider’s calculations, that amounts to cancelling approximately $126 million worth of contracts per day. If the commission works at that pace all of the 530 days between January 20, 2025 and DOGE’s target end date of July 4, 2026, it would cancel around $67 billion in contracts each year. That would end up being about 3% of Musk’s original goal of slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget, or 7% of his pared down goal of $1 trillion.
Of course, DOGE’s early activity is no guarantee of what’s to come, especially given how quickly things are changing at the group and how much remains unknown about its organization. On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing DOGE inside the White House and laying out how its employees will embed in federal agencies. The group still can’t change the federal budget without Congress.
In its post on Friday, DOGE says most of the focus has been on DEI contracts and empty buildings. There are no further details on X or DOGE’s website about the cancellations, and there’s no way currently to verify the information. Musk, Trump, a spokesperson for DOGE, and the General Services Administration, which leases most government buildings, did not immediately respond to BI’s request for comment.
DOGE’s early cost-cutting is notable in its specifics, too: Musk has a demonstrated affection for the number 420, a reference to marijuana.
In 2018, he proposed taking Tesla private at $420 per share, an idea that eventually landed him in legal hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Later that year, he smoked a joint on camera with Joe Rogan and changed his then-Twitter bio to “420.” On April 20, 2023 — or 4/20, the unofficial holiday of weed — his company SpaceX launched a rocket. And in October of that year, Musk bought Twitter at $54.20 a share (take a look at last three numbers of that price).
Weed references aside, DOGE’s post on X echoes its initial mission as a cost-cutting and deregulatory group, despite recent changes to its stated goals. In his executive order, Trump redefined DOGE’s purpose as updating the government’s software and IT systems, though the group hasn’t stopped taking aim at what it sees as wasteful spending.
