Elon Musk Defends his Actions at the U.S. Treasury

Elon Musk describes the basic omissions the DOGE team has found in the payments system at Treasury. The procedures and information that are missing are essential to the accounting operations of even small businesses--just ask any bookkeeper who uses Quicken.

But I, for one, am open to hearing a response from someone in the current financial chain-of-command. For example, one explanation that the system actually works is that the account-code information is contained in another payables subsystem that isn't upwardly linked. (I doubt that, frankly, because the DOGE kids are supposedly mapping all the systems and their functions, but they could have missed something.)

Meanwhile, until a plausible reason is provided, the benefit of Elon and his boys continuing their work far far outweighs the risk that a few of them will go rogue and sell Social Security numbers to crooks.

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…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

The full text:

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!

- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.

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!

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.

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.