Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered that the federal government cannot account for approximately $4.7 trillion of taxpayers’ money paid for unknown reasons.
DOGE found that the tracking codes used to associate payments with budget line items were left blank, making it impossible to trace the payments.
“The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process),” DOGE explained on X.
“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible.”
DOGE noted that the TAS field, which allows account identification had since been made mandatory, increasing visibility into the payments.
Less than a month into Trump’s presidency, DOGE has exposed how trillions of taxpayers’ money was wasted on unnecessary projects overseas. They include $10 million for voluntary male medical circumcision in Mozambique, $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre, $40M for “gender equality and women empowerment hub,” $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” and $14M for “social cohesion” in Mali.
A DOGE subcommittee hearing chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also uncovered approximately $2.7 trillion in erroneous or improper payments, including for projects whose authorization had expired. Over $700 billion was also lost due to inaccurate record keeping.
Similarly, over $2.7 trillion went to Medicare and Medicaid payments overseas to people who should not have received the money. Musk also discovered over 25 million people between the ages of 100 and 369 years, almost certainly deceased, still receiving Social Security payments.
“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the ‘death’ field set to FALSE. Maybe Twilight is real, and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk X’ed.
Responding to Real America’s Voice White House correspondent Brian Glenn about the wasteful spending, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said “that is certainly fraud.”
“There is also a lot of contracts they’ve identified that, just as a hypothetical example, are a million bucks been only $500,000 went out the door, so where’s the rest of that cash?” Leavitt noted.
Musk had warned that radical action was required because “America is going BANKRUPT from EXTREME levels of government spending.” The U.S. national debt interest payments had doubled in four years to reach a staggering $1.17 trillion under Biden, while the budget deficit also topped $1.8 trillion in 2024. Government debt also increased by $2.3 trillion to reach $35.7 trillion between 2023 and 2024.
Subsequently, Musk’s DOGE is looking for public input to uncover more wasteful spending and fraud and has set up over two dozen affiliates to oversee the process.
“DOGE is looking for help from the general public! Please DM insight for reducing waste, fraud, and abuse, along with any helpful insights or awesome ideas, to the relevant DOGE affiliates (found on the Affiliates tab). For example, @DOGE_USDA, @DOGE_SSA, etc.”
Meanwhile, Musk is optimistic that he could cut the deficit by $1 trillion by 2026 by reducing wasteful spending by $4 billion per day.
“I am cautiously optimistic that we will reach the $4B/day FY2026 reduction this weekend,” he X’ed.
