GEOFF BENNETT: Billionaire Elon Musk says his campaign to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and cancel government contracts is in the name of rooting out fraud and waste.

His DOGE group has posted what it calls a wall of receipts on its Web site that claims it has saved billions by cutting certain federal contracts.

But reports and government documents prove that many of these so-called savings are either misleading or incorrect.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has been looking into this and joins us now.

So, Laura, what kinds of savings are Musk and his team claiming, and does the math add up?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, Elon Musk and his team on that wall of receipts say that their total cuts equal $65 billion in savings.

They base that on contract cancellations, firing workers and -- quote -- "fraud detection."

But as The New York Times first reported, five of DOGE's biggest contracts that they say have resulted in savings ended up being deleted from that wall of receipts after outlets pointed out that there were errors.

And some of the biggest errors in savings are, as CBS first reported, a USAID contract for $650 million that was listed three times, as The Intercept first reported, a Social Security contract listed as $232 million, instead of $560,000, and an ICE contract that DOGE listed as $8 billion, when, in reality, it was $8 million.

And it's important to note that $8 million ICE contract was a credit line.

That means that ICE may have never ended up paying out that total $8 million.

And some of these contracts were -- on the wall of receipts were either already paid or canceled under the Biden administration.

So DOGE is essentially taking a lot of credit for some of these contracts that don't appear to be actually the savings that they say they are.

GEOFF BENNETT: I know you were working the phones and talking to vendors who appear on this so-called wall of receipts.

What did they tell you?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So our colleague, Kyle Midura, spoke to one of these federal vendors, a Taylor Jones.

His company, CulturePoint, does leadership in management training.

And his company was listed on DOGE's wall of receipts as having a contract for almost $10 million.

But Taylor Jones told "News Hour" that not only was the amount of money wrong -- it was actually $100,000 - - but it was not a guaranteed payment.

It was a credit line and the agreement with the government was never signed.

TAYLOR JONES, CulturePoint: We never had a contract.

And we have actually never had a contract with the government that was a $10 million contract or even a $1 million contract, so not that we're opposed to it, but we just -- it's never happened.

So we were a little surprised to start getting calls from reporters about a non-contract that was never executed.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, essentially, there wasn't even a contract to delete, Geoff.

And when you look at all of this across the board, the math is really not adding up to $65 billion.

GEOFF BENNETT: There will be people who will say, well, what Musk is trying to do is still a worthy effort, trying to clean up government waste.

How much money has the team actually saved so far?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So the actual savings is around $2 billion, according to budget experts that we spoke to.

And, again, as you noted, Musk says that this is about -- that these cuts are meant to help reduce the deficit and pay for Republicans' tax cuts.

We spoke to Jessica Riedl.

She's a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute.

She was also the chief economist for former Senator Rob Portman, a Republican.

And she put those so-called savings in context and corrected the record.

JESSICA RIEDL, Manhattan Institute: At this point, the $2 billion in savings identified by Elon Musk would pay for 1/75th of 1 percent of the entire national debt.

I have not found any legitimate evidence of fraud in the spending that Elon Musk has highlighted.

I have found expenditures that a lot of people wish the government wouldn't engage in, such as DEI contracts and Politico subscriptions.

But that doesn't make them fraudulent.

It just makes them policies that certain people would not like us to be spending money on.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, as Jessica noted there, so far, there appears to be no evidence of fraud, despite Elon Musk claims of it.

And she also added that, if you did distribute some of the -- that $2 billion or so in savings across taxpayers in America, which is what Elon Musk has said he would like to do, it would basically come to $2.42 per person, so potentially not enough for a cup of coffee in some cities.

GEOFF BENNETT: Meantime, there are new concerns at Veterans Affairs because DOGE has set to cancel a number of contracts there.

Who stands to be affected?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So VA Secretary Doug Collins boasted this week of $2 billion worth of cuts.

That would be across about 875 contracts that would be canceled.

And multiple sources told me and Dan Sagalyn that two of those canceled contracts are with organizations that help implement the PACT Act.

The PACT Act, what it did was expanded health care and disability benefits for veterans that had illnesses caused by toxic exposures.

And so cutting that, those contracts could put the onus back on veterans to have to deal with their benefits, trying to essentially communicate between the health care side and the benefits side.

So it could be incredibly detrimental to them.

We don't know the status of many of these 875 contracts.

We haven't gotten clear answers from Veterans Affairs, and it appears as though the ones that affect the PACT Act could very well still be canceled.

GEOFF BENNETT: Laura Barron-Lopez, our thanks to you and the team for working through all this.

We appreciate it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.