DOGE’s Zombie Contracts: They Were Killed but Have Come Back to Life

At least 44 of the government contracts canceled on the orders of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative have been resurrected by federal agencies, wiping out more than $220 million of his group’s purported savings, according to a New York Times analysis of federal spending data.

But Mr. Musk’s group continues to list 43 of those contracts as “terminations” on its website, which it calls the “Wall of Receipts.” The group even added some of them days or weeks after they had been resurrected. The result was another in a series of data errors on the website that made the group seem more successful in reducing government costs than it had been.

The White House says that this is a paperwork lag that will be remedied.

The revived contracts ranged from small-dollar agreements about software licenses to large partnerships with vendors that managed government data and records. Most of the contracts were canceled in February and March, when Mr. Musk’s group, the Department of Government Efficiency, was demanding that agencies make huge cuts in spending and staff.

Then agencies reinstated them, sometimes just days later. In one case, the Environmental Protection Agency revived a contract after just 2 ½ hours. Mr. Musk’s group still listed that one as canceled for weeks afterward, even after it had been revived and then extended — so that it will cost more now than before.

These reversals illustrated not only the struggles of Mr. Musk’s team to produce accurate data about its results, but also the drawbacks of its fast, secretive approach to cutting spending as part of a sweeping effort to slash $1 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget in a few months.

Contractors said that, in its rush, Mr. Musk’s group had recommended killing contracts that were unlikely to stay dead. Some were required by law. Others required skills that the government needed but did not have.