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Elon Musk’s DOGE alleges ID code for $4.7 trillion federal payments missing, says ‘traceability almost impossible…’
The Elon Musk led DOGE has in a post claimed that identification codes for nearly $4.7 trillion of federal payments is missing, saying that traceability for these is “almost impossible”. It claimed the field is now mandatory to increase insight.
Elon Musk led United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has in a social media post claimed that the identification code details of nearly $4.7 trillion worth of federal payments are untraceable.
DOGE has been marching ahead with budget, spending and job cuts across federal departments, sometimes causing chaos and upheaval, as it seeks to fulfill Elon Musk's promise to “slash US debt”.
The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), among other companies, has occupied central space in Donald Trump's administration, despite being unelected to any government position. Elon Musk's involvement has often been criticised by Democratic lawmakers as an “over-reach” and “breach of democracy”.
‘Identification Code Missing, Making Traceability Almost Impossible…’
The post claimed that the space to define Treasury Access Symbol (TAS), which is used to identify and link Treasury payments to items has earlier optional and thus often “left blank”, making it “almost impossible” to trace. It added that this field is now mandatory to fill to “increase insight” into spends.
In a post on social media platform X early on February 18, DOGE's official account said: “The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process). In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going. Thanks to US Treasury for the great work.” (sic)
Elon Musk Alleges ‘Potential $100 billion Fraud Annually’
The DOGE post comes days after Elon Musk's own post on the US Treasury payments last week, where he claimed that the US government payments system's inefficiency is potentially leading to “over $100 billion fraud annually”.
In the long word post, Elon Musk claimed that he was informed “that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number”, calling it “extremely suspicious”. He had then said that DOGE and the US Treasury Department would work to address the issue.
He added, “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.”
In another post he added: “The magnitude of the fraud in government payments (your tax dollars being spent) is MUCH higher than you think!”
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Business NewsNewsUs NewsElon Musk’s DOGE alleges ID code for $4.7 trillion federal payments missing, says ‘traceability almost impossible…’
First Published:18 Feb 2025, 01:09 PM IST
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