DOGE discovers $4.7 trillion in Treasury payments were missing critical code: ‘Traceability almost impossible’
The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item
By Victor Nava
February 19, 2025
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code, which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.”
The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as a “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,” read an X post from DOGE.
The Elon Musk-led project to curb waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government said that in light of the discovery, use of the TAS code is now mandatory.
“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, thanking the Treasury Department for its “great work” implementing the change.
Musk touted the change as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”
“This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve],” Musk tweeted. “Nice work by all.”
DOGE says it recovered $1.9 billion in taxpayer funds ‘misplaced’ by Criminal Biden regime
The massive trove belonged to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and was discovered a day after HUD Secretary Scott Turner launched a DOGE task force at his agency.
“$1.9 billion of HUD money was just recovered after being misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process,” DOGE posted on X.
The cost-cutting group, led by Elon Musk, said it “worked together” with Turner “to fix the issue and de-obligated the funds which are now available for other use by the Treasury.”
“It is astounding how much taxpayer money can be saved with even a small amount of effort,” Musk wrote on X, sharing the solicitation contracts related to the money found by DOGE.
The contracts were earmarked for Carrington Mortgage Services and Selene Finance in August 2019 and would’ve paid out $751,221,224.87 and $836,689.235.84 to each company, respectively.
Turner, a former NFL-cornerback-turned-Dallas housing developer, was confirmed by the Senate to lead HUD last week.
“We will be very detailed and deliberate about every dollar spent in serving tribal, rural and urban communities across America,” he said Thursday.
“With President Trump’s leadership, business as usual – the status quo – is no longer the posture that we will take,” Turner added. “And with the help of DOGE, we will identify and eliminate all waste, fraud and abuse. “
Turner noted that HUD had already identified “$260 million in savings” before the $1.9 billion discovery.
The Treasury Department, which facilitates trillions of dollars worth of government payments every year, was one of the first agencies DOGE embedded itself in after President Trump’s inauguration.
DOGE staffers at Treasury have been granted access to the department’s highly sensitive payment systems in an effort to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
“This is not some roving band … This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said of DOGE during a Bloomberg TV interview last week.
DOGE recently proposed “deleting paper checks” at Treasury, arguing that it would save taxpayers “at least $750 million per year.”
The initiative noted that the Treasury Department must keep “a physical lockbox” to collect the more than 100 million checks it processes each year, which costs about $2.40 per check to maintain.
In fiscal year 2023, some $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost due to returned or expired checks, according to DOGE.
READ MORE:
Pentagon Can’t Account For $4.1 Trillion in 2024 Budget, Sparking Fears of ‘Another 9/11’
Peak Waste: Feds Set Record for Improper Payments
Share or comment on this article.
Your support is crucial in exposing fake news and in helping us defeat mass censorship.
The Demorats are scurrying around like vermin. They may even go for the throat like a trapped rat. Just as long as they’re dead at the end of the process.