Tesla CEO and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head, Elon Musk on Sunday highlighted concerns about the United States government’s payment system. He voiced his concerns citing troubling ‘inefficiencies’ and potential ‘fraud’ worth over USD 100 billion every year. Musk wrote on X, “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.”
What Did Musk Say?
He informed that the US Treasury Department and DOGE team have jointly agreed to change reporting requirements for all outgoing government payments. Musk made it clear that all outgoing government payments will now have a ‘payment categorization code’ for auditing purposes.
Musk wrote on X, “To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following: Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible. All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!”
Musk further emphasised the implementation of the ‘DO-NOT-PAY list.’ This list identifies entities involved in fraudulent activities and called for the list to be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
Musk Calls For Reforms
“The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already,” stressed Musk.
He called the situation extremely suspicious and asked for urgent addressal. “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,” Musk further wrote.
