>> Continued From the Previous Page <<
In response to the ruling, Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to shed light on the rampant incompetence and fraud within the Treasury Department. He stated, “Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.”
He further elaborated, “When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.”
To put this into perspective, $1 billion of taxpayer money is vanishing every week, while the judicial system seems to protect the very framework that permits such losses. According to Musk, DOGE investigators found that government payments were being made without proper documentation, lacking audit trails, and with zero accountability.
Musk outlined the agreed-upon measures between DOGE and the Treasury to rectify these issues:
- All outgoing government payments must include a payment categorization code, essential for financial audits, which is often omitted, rendering audits nearly impossible.
- Each payment must have a rationale provided in the comment field, which is currently left blank. While no judgment is applied to this rationale yet, it is a step toward explaining payments beyond providing no information.
- The DO-NOT-PAY list, which includes entities known to be fraudulent, deceased individuals, probable fronts for terrorist organizations, or those not matching Congressional appropriations, must be actively implemented and not ignored. Currently, it can take up to a year to add entities to this list, which is excessively long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
Musk emphasized that these obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not by anyone from DOGE. He expressed frustration that such measures were not already in place.
He also pointed out that the government has historically ignored fraud because fraudsters receiving money don’t complain, whereas blocking fraudulent payments would generate backlash from criminals and their enablers. “Nobody in Treasury management cared enough before. I do want to credit the working level people in Treasury who have wanted to do this for many years, but have been stopped by prior management,” he said.
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Musk added, “Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain minimization. People who receive money don’t complain, but people who don’t receive money (especially fraudsters) complain very loudly, so the fraud was allowed to continue.”
This situation underscores the urgent need for reform within the Treasury Department to safeguard taxpayer dollars and ensure that government payments are made with proper oversight and accountability.
