At least 44 of government contracts cancelled in Elon Musk's Cost-Cut Initiative order have been revived by federal agencies, sweeping out more than $220 million in savings for his group.
However, Musk's group continues to list 43 of these contracts as “termination” on its website, which is called the “receipt wall.” The group added some of them days or weeks after their revival. The results were another of a series of data errors on the website, making the group more successful by reducing government costs than before.
The White House says this is a delay in the documents being repaired.
The revived contracts ranged from small software licensing agreements to large-scale partnerships with vendors who managed government data and records. Most of the contracts were cancelled in February and March, and Musk's group government efficiency demanded that agencies significantly cut their spending and staff.
The agency then revived them. Sometimes after a few days. In one case, the Environmental Protection Agency reinstated the contract just two and a half hours later. Musk's group still lists the ones that were cancelled for weeks after it was revived and extended.
These reversals not only demonstrated the drawbacks of Musk's team's struggle to produce accurate data on results, but also the shortcomings of a fast, secret approach to cutting spending as part of a drastic effort to cut $1 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget in a few months.
The contractor said in a hurry that Musk's group had recommended killing contracts that are unlikely to be dead. Some were required by law. Others needed skills that the government needed but didn't have.
Their reversal raises broader questions about the number of deep but hastily budget cuts in the Musk Group, and is rewind over time, eroding the long-term impact on bureaucracy and governance in Washington.
In northern Virginia, government contractor Larry Aldrich was notified in February that his company, Brensis, had lost a contract to design and produce videos for a veteran issues website for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The VA cannot do this on its own,” Aldrich said. “They don't have the talent or skill set.”
It didn't last long.
“Two weeks later we got an email saying it was going to be back,” Aldrich said. “I'm sure wow, someone came back and said, 'I can't do this.' ”
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said the reversal showed the agency had reevaluated the cuts it had made on its first push to follow Musk's instructions.
“The Doge wall of receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment. This will take time,” Fields said. “Updates to the Doge Savings page continue to be fast, with departments and institutions continuing to highlight the massive savings Doge is achieving.”
Musk's group has cited more than 9,400 contracts claiming credit for cancellations, saving a total of $32 billion. Overall, Musk's group says it saved taxpayers $165 billion.
Fields said the reversal identified by the New York Times was “a very small potato” compared to its production.
He refused to say whether the time had repeated the contract to the group's list beyond what was discovered.
The Times revealed these reversals by searching the Federal Procurement Data System, a government system that tracks contract changes. The Times looked for examples where a cancelled agreement on Musk's website showed signs of new life, such as adding funds, an extended timeline, or updates that contain words like “retraction” or “recovery.”
The search was revived after 44 zombies from the cost-cutting group, contracts were killed.
This is because contract changes can take time to the procurement data system, and there is no standard way to identify contracts recovered in this system. The Times search may have missed some.
The revival began in mid-February.
Raquel Romero and her husband had contracts to provide leadership training to lawyers in the agricultural sector. They lost it on February 14th and reclaimed it four days later.
It was a godsend for Romero and her husband, providing $45,000 in revenue when all other federal businesses disappeared.
“We lost all the income we had planned for the calendar year of 2025. We had to sell our home. We are in the process of moving to a condo,” she said. “We feel really fortunate that this resource had the resources to buy time.”
The Agriculture Department said in a statement it had restored the contract after discovering it was “required by law.” I refused to say which law. Romero said he felt that reinstatement was a product of personal intervention and praised the Senior Agricultural Bureau's attorney, who was a major advocate for her and her husband's work.
“All I know is that I retired two weeks later,” Romero said.
Other inversions started to continue.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has revived 16 contracts, most of the agency in Times' analysis.
The department declined to comment on why. However, a group of veterans noted that some of the cancelled contracts have something to do with the functions required by law, such as contractors who helped veterans search military records and use them as evidence to obtain benefits.
The contract was restored eight days later.
In the education sector, Musk's group said it saved $38 million over multiple years by cancelling contracts to manage a repository of data on schools around the country. But lawmakers and advocacy groups opposed, requiring that the data be collected and that the government should decide it to determine its eligibility for certain grants, like some tailored to rural areas.
“They should have used Mesulpel,” said Rachel Dinks of Knowledge Alliance, an association of education companies that included those that lost the contract. “But instead they went in with an x and cut it all down.”
The grant recovered 18 days later, but was stripped of $17 million in potential funds.
The shortest-lived cancellations included an EPA agreement signed in 2023, which included paying Maryland-based companies to raise awareness about asthma. According to contract data, the EPA cancelled its contract at 4:31pm on March 7th. The contract was then revived at 6:58pm on the same night.
why?
“The revived procurement reflects the agency's decision that the funding measures supported management priorities,” the EPA said. The agency refused to provide details regarding the incident. Last month, the EPA agreed to extend the contract for another year, paying $171,000 more than before the cancellation. The contractor did not answer the question.
Musk said that from the start of the group's work, the government likely has to cancel cuts in spending.
“We need to act quickly to stop wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” Musk said in the February “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “But if you make a mistake, you'll quickly turn it around.”
But Musk also made a second commitment that was important to do the first thing. He said his group would post details of the work online so that the public can have accurate and up-to-date photos of what they have cut.
“We can name the details, line by line,” Musk said in the same interview. “I have a receipt. I'll post a receipt.”
The Times discovered numerous errors on the group's website from the start. In many cases, these errors inflated the value of the savings Musk's team achieved. Musk has pledged the group to make a $1 trillion budget cut this year, but so far it has fallen far below that goal. And even these cuts are inflated as they contain errors and guesswork.
Musk's group, for example, claimed credit for cancelling a program that actually ended years ago. He also double-counted the same cancellations, posting claims that he once confused “1 billion” and “million”.
This month, the Times sent the White House a list of dozens of revived contracts still on the list. Two days later, Musk's group deleted one. EPA contracts cancelled in less than one day.
But at the same time, he added five other already dependent contracts to the “end” list, claiming an additional $57 million in credits on the already rolled back savings.
