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........

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