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February 3, 2025

Musk trips Treasury Department over ‘fraudulent’ handouts

Elon Musk is making headlines just as much as Donald Trump these days.

The latest buzz was started when Musk announced that he had found “fraudulent” handouts made by the Treasury Department.

Democrats and the media immediately went nuts after it was reported that Musk has been given access to federal payment systems.

Bad Deals

According to Musk, DOGE has uncovered an alleged policy where the Treasury Department was told to approve all payments without asking questions, including payments “even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.”

Musk posted to X, "The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

On Saturday, Democrats got their backs up when the New York Times reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had given DOGE access to the federal payment system.

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) confirmed he had been “informed” of the change, stating, "Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system.

“Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

While everyone is up in arms over this, Trump’s executive order granted this to DOGE, as it stated, "Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.  USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.”

Musk has been concentrating in finding government spending they can end right now on wasteful programs, which is a very smart move.

Ending programs Trump can do… but he will have a problem outright cutting agencies, likely needing an act of Congress to make that happen.

To that point, Musk stated, "So really we need to reduce our government spending, and we need to re-examine… I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible. Where is it not sensible?’"

Musk also announced about $1 billion in cuts for canceling contracts for DEI-related programs, which is also not sitting well with Democrats.

I have stated several times that I doubt Musk will be able to come anywhere near the $2 trillion in cuts he promised during the election cycle, as I expect the final amount to be about $500 billion or so.

There is just too much that is tied to Congress that he will want to cut, but regardless, he is off to a great start.

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