Someone must always be watching the watchdogs in a federal government with the sweeping powers this one has.


ments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups,” Musk reported in a tweet. “They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.” It’s certainly true that DOGE audi-


tors and investigators need to be monitored in order to ensure that data involving potentially millions of Amer- icans isn’t misused by an organization headed by Musk with extensive gov- ernment contracts of his own. Someone must always be watching


the watchdogs in a federal government with the sweeping powers this one has. But many long-term observers of Washington are publicly or privately acknowledging that DOGE is the first entity to arrive in town in a long time to examine how the government actu- ally spends money and manages itself. For example, the federal govern-


investigative reporters that have been unleashed to jointly attack Musk have apparently never learned that lesson. In their first major front-page story


ripping Musk, readers learned in the 43rd(!) paragraph that the government identified $236 billion of fraudulent government payments in 2023. So the dollar amount of federal fraud


in just one year is a bigger number than the entire budget of virtually every state in America. But apparently Musk is the villain for trying to ferret it out. Despite the vitriol, Musk is already


hitting pay dirt. When a DOGE land- ing team arrived at the Treasury Department, it was at first denied access to key records. The longest- serving civil servant at the department had to resign before the team could look under the hood. “What they discovered was that


payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed to always approve pay-


ment’s procurement process is badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. The Pentagon recently failed its


seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the department’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Gillian Tett, who chairs the editori-


al board of the establishment-oriented Financial Times, says there is a des- perate need for government reform. Regarding Washington’s hopelessly outdated approach to technology, she notes:


“America is bedeviled by a paradox.


On the one hand, its private sector is extraordinarily dynamic, and driving much of the 21st-century tech revolu- tion, with its laser-like focus on con- sumers. But on the other, its govern- ment bureaucracy is sclerotic and inef- ficient, with an antediluvian approach to technology.” Indeed, some of the government’s


inefficiency may well be purposeful, with unelected bureaucrats working


overtime to limit transparency and accountability. They have perfected secrecy to


enshrine their power, preventing con- gressional oversight and even hinder- ing a sitting president from imple- menting meaningful reforms. The Byzantine rules and regula-


tions — combined with the overclas- sification of documents — make it nearly impossible for a presidential administration or journalists to under- stand what is really happening inside federal agencies. No one believes Americans would


support a full-scale restructuring of runaway entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. But to avert the crisis that threatens


the solvency of those programs, the government must help end overspend- ing in other areas. DOGE can take aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expen- ditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to the $1.5 billion in grants that USAID was ladling out, to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood. Musk himself will soon step out of


the spotlight on DOGE. Federal law only permits a private citizen to work for 130 consecutive days as a volun- teer, thus limiting his future influence and power. He says the top goal for the auditors and tech specialists who will remain is to eliminate the need for DOGE’s existence by July 4, 2026 — the expiration date he has set for the project. “There would no better birthday gift


to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud,” he told The Wall Street Journal.


MARCH 2025 | NEWSMAX 9


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