Beware DOGE

 I always believed that there was some amount of waste, fraud and corruption in federal government spending.

However, the early results that are being reported by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE") team are beyond anything I could have imagined.

DOGE is finding that much of federal spending is being done without any internal controls whatsoever.

Congress appropriates money to a department, a budget is established by OMB for that department and then the department just starts sending bills to Treasury to pay. 

It's never reconciled against anything. There's no Controller. They can never pass audits because there is nothing to check the requests for payments against. You can't audit something you can't reconcile.

Elon Musk reported over the weekend that the most basic controls are not in place with Social Security.

The same SS# you can be used many times over.

The fact that the Social Security database is not de-duplicated is an invitation and gateway to fraud.

This means that Social Security payments could be made to multiple individuals using the same number.

It also means that hundreds of illegal immigrants could use the same SS# to gain employment.

There could not be a more basic internal control than this one and it is not in place.

It has also been disclosed that large amounts appear to be going to support mainstream media sites from USAID.

Billions and billions in foreign aid spending which has often been spent in direct contravention of U.S. foreign policy goals.

Billions that went to support NGO's (non-government organizations) that could not have operated without government funding.

A few examples.

To be fair, some of this money appears to have been paid for subscriptions. However, DOGE found that millions and millions of dollars are being spent for media and software subscriptions that were never used.

This funding appears to have been done to buy and control the media narrative.

$310 million for a Palestinian cement factory while we knew that Hamas was building a web of terror tunnels to use to threaten Israel and destabilize the Middle East.

The Red Cross received millions of USAID which then used the money to provide maps and resources to migrants to travel to the U.S. border and then enter the country illegally.

Credit: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1887622776569110726

Another recent study found that there are over 35,000 nonprofits in the United States that receive over half of their money from government grants.

Catholic Charities was the biggest beneficiary of facilitating the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.

One of the worst examples I have seen is the recent report from the CBO that found that $516 billion of spending in fiscal 2024 was for items for which appropriation congressional authority had expired.

In other words, there was absolutely no legislative authority for the spending but it was done anyway.

In effect, it appears that almost every aspect of federal spending is on automatic pilot.

Elon Musk recently posted this graphic on X.

That is so true for the deep state bureaucrats who have been living off of the federal government's largesse.

However, the deep state and the Democrats are starting to fight back against Musk and Trump now that they see their free spending ways under such threat.

Let's look a a few of the claims that are being made in an attempt to make the public at large fear DOGE more than the billions and billions of their tax dollars being wasted.

Elon Musk and his team DOGE team are unelected

Yes, this is true. However, Donald Trump was elected and he stated very clearly throughout the campaign that he was going to bring Elon Musk and his team in to form a Department of Government Efficiency. There was no bait and switch. Trump was very transparent about what he wanted to do.

In addition, a CBS News poll that was just released shows that 70% of voters agree that Donald Trump is doing exactly what he promised to do during the campaign.

DOGE is unconstitutional because it was never authorized by Congress

Trump was one step ahead of the critics on this one.

Trump did not actually create a new agency. He repurposed an existing agency that was already authorized by Congress and repurposed its mission.

The existing agency was the United States Digital Service which was established during the Obama years to make government software and systems more effective. It was already funded and the President has the power to appoint the administrator (Musk) without additional Congressional approval.

The initial focus of DOGE is focused on the financial systems to understand exactly how the federal payment systems work. This is the necessary first step into any audit.

Trump merely changed the name of an existing agency. Note that the United States Digital Service became the United States DOGE Service. The USDS is still the USDS.

Those who want to challenge DOGE on constitutional grounds are not going to have an easy time of it.

Elon Musk has a conflict of interest in serving as head of DOGE

Some argue that Musk should be disqualified because he has a conflict of interest in heading DOGE. It is not clear to me what the conflict is. He does have contracts with the federal government with SpaceX. However, the United States would not even have a space program today if it were not for Musk.

It is also a true that Musk would have probably done much better financially with the Democrats in power than Trump. They wanted to limit oil and gas in every way possible and provide subsidies for electric vehicles. These positions would have both benefited Musk much more than Trump's policies would.

It is also true that EVERYONE has a conflict of some type when it comes to the federal government.  Does any federal government employee have any interest in limiting government spending? The power of every elected federal official comes from the power of the purse. Taking tax dollars and spending them. Can they be trusted to audit themselves?

Consider as well that Trump and Musk are both working for free. Trump's net worth has dropped by about half since he first got into politics. Tesla's stock price is down by almost 15% since Trump took office. If Trump and Musk got involved in this to get rich they made a bad call.

Now compare them to people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell since they got involved in politics and government.

It is hard to imagine anyone would be less conflicted than Musk. Would a federal government auditor be better than Musk in finding waste? In addition, Musk is probably the nation's largest taxpayer. Who would have a greater interest in seeing that their tax dollars were spent wisely?

Consider as well that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an agency of the federal government that has been around for a century and is supposed to be doing what DOGE is doing.

Source: https://www.gao.gov/about/what-gao-does

The GAO employs over 3,000 people.

DOGE has about 20 and has done more in less than a month than the GAO has ever been able to do.

Who is conflicted more?

Musk has a bunch of 21-25 year olds working for DOGE. What could they know?

One is 19 years old which caused someone to ask what is a 19 year an expert at?

That caused Michael Dell to reply this way.

By the way, for the record...

Bill Gates also started Microsoft when he was 19.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was 19.

Steve Jobs started Apple when he was 20.

Perhaps it is not a bad idea to have some younger people take a fresh look at things, don't you think?

How can we trust  Musk and the DOGE team looking at the sensitive government and personal information in the Treasury Department system?

Democrats are arguing that it is of the highest concern that Elon Musk and DOGE not have access to Treasury Department and other systems.

They argue that your personal data may be compromised.

They even got a federal judge (an Obama appointee) to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Saturday to prevent DOGE (or any federal appointee) from accessing any Treasury Department records.

Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/federal-judge-blocks-elon-musks-doge-from-accessing-treasury-records-after-democratic-ags-file-lawsuit

This would mean even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could not access records in his own department.

However, how are you supposed to be able to audit anything if you cannot look at any records?

Do you see that what they really want is to have no one looking into what is going on.

In the meantime, Democrats tried to sweep under the rug the fact that a little over a month ago Chinese hackers accessed thousands of Treasury files.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/15/chinese-hackers-treasury-files-yellen-00198506

Those same Democrats made barely a peep about that Treasury access but Elon Musk and DOGE is a existential  threat to the personal data of Americans?

Please bear in mind that Elon Musk was also one of the founders of PayPal. He knows something about data security. In addition, what earthly reasons would the world's richest man have for compromising your social security number anyway? I would argue that there is much more risk to you in having that data in the hands of the federal government than it is with DOGE.

Take a step back from all of this and consider what all of this means.

Those who are complaining the loudest about DOGE are those who clearly have the most to hide.

What is wrong about an outsider auditing and analyzing where our tax dollars are going?

In the end, DOGE is essentially an advisory role. It can uncover things and make recommendations but any real reforms are going to have to get through Congress and/or approved by President Trump.

There is accountability to the people's elected representatives.

Why are the Deep State and the Democrats attacking Musk and DOGE so viciously?

It makes no sense unless they have no interest in transparency.

Why should be people be mad about DOGE?

That is like being angry at a bank's auditors who audit your bank account and found out the bank has been stealing from your account for years.

Instead of being outraged at the bank for stealing from you, you become angry at the auditor for bringing it to your attention.

How does that make sense?

It doesn't.

Do not be fooled by the misdirection and misinformation about DOGE.

It is the deep state that should beware of DOGE.

Not the taxpayers paying the bills.