A blitz of contract cancellations and phone plan cuts this week is the latest push by the Department of Government Efficiency to make good on its promise to reduce waste with taxpayer funds.

On June 9, DOGE posted on X that federal agencies had terminated 111 contracts with a combined ceiling value of $790 million, including a $21,000 Department of Energy coaching program for senior executives and a $480,000 U.S. Agency for Global Media maintenance deal in Lusaka, Zambia. DOGE claimed the cancellations saved taxpayers $263 million.

The day before, DOGE’s account announced the elimination of more than 1,700 unused phone plans and more than 2,200 idle cellular equipment payments at the General Services Administration, reportedly saving $800,000 annually. The Small Business Administration also cut 6,505 unneeded VOIP licenses, a move the agency said would save $469,000 a year.

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That update followed a May 21 disclosure in which DOGE found that nearly 20% of the Office of Personnel Management’s phone lines were either unused or duplicative. OPM canceled the lines in about an hour, resulting in $100,000 in annual savings, DOGE said. The agency suggested that if OPM’s waste were typical across government, unused lines alone could be costing taxpayers $100 million each year.

But even as DOGE touts these numbers, critics from within the Trump administration are raising alarms about what they see as exaggerated claims and minimal impact.

“DOGE delivered zero,” former White House strategist Steve Bannon said Wednesday on his War Room podcast. “Nothing on waste, fraud, abuse. They had some recommendations on programmatic spending, but people have been on that for years—on PBS, on NPR, on USAID. Where is the fraud?”

Bannon has long criticized Musk’s role in the Trump administration and recently called for Musk to be deported to South Africa amid a high-profile social media feud with the President. Bannon argued that DOGE’s savings came from cutting already-approved program budgets, not from uncovering new fraud or systemic abuse.

From the left, watchdog groups and Democrats have accused DOGE of acting without transparency and overstepping its legal authority. Multiple lawsuits have been filed over its mass layoffs and data access efforts. One court temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury records, citing privacy concerns.

BBC reporting notes that while DOGE publicly claims $175 billion in savings as of April 23, only $61.5 billion has been itemized. Musk’s initial goal of saving $2 trillion annually was later revised down.

Still, the idea behind DOGE remains popular. In February, polling found that a majority of Americans support efforts to reduce government spending, even if the specifics of DOGE’s actions or Musk’s involvement are more controversial.

House Speaker Mike Johnson recently praised DOGE’s work on social media, writing, “The House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand.”

Musk officially stepped down from his role as DOGE’s public face in late May after five months as an unpaid special government employee, though he and the White House both suggested he would continue to advise the President informally. DOGE’s remaining staff — many of them young technologists—will now report directly to Cabinet departments.

It remains unclear how long DOGE will continue to operate in its current form. The agency was created by executive order and must complete its work by July 2026 unless extended.

In a departing press conference, Musk characterized his time at DOGE as “mostly just hard work” and said the mission to reduce inefficiency with taxpayer dollars is far from over. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time,” Musk wrote in one of his final posts, “as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”