Feds Spent Roughly $1 Billion To Conduct Survey That Could’ve Been Done For $10,000, Musk Says

The Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) Elon Musk said Thursday on Fox News that the group found the federal government spent almost $1 billion on a survey that could’ve only cost thousands.

Following President Donald Trump entering office in January, his administration pushed for Musk and DOGE to comb through the government’s spending and identify potential cuts to save taxpayer dollars. On “Special Report with Bret Baier,” the Fox News host sat with Musk and his DOGE team and asked the billionaire what has been the most “astonishing thing” he’s witnessed so far in this process.

After the publication of Musk’s statements, CBS News reported that the outlet had found no evidence that the Department of the Interior had spent or planned to spend almost a billion dollars on a survey or any contract.

During the interview, Steve Davis, a member working with Musk at DOGE, stated the survey had allegedly been part of an $830 million contract by the Department of the Interior, which was reportedly stopped by DOGE. However, according to CBS News, the outlet was unable to find evidence of the contract on DOGE’s site or the list of other contracts the DOGE team stated they had terminated.

“The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government,” Musk said. “It is astonishing. It’s mind-blowing. We routinely encounter waste of a billion dollars or more, casually.”

“For example, like the simple survey that was literally 10 questions survey. You could do it with SurveyMonkey, would cost about $10,000. The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that,” Musk added.

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