The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is tracing the long, complex trail of government spending. US taxpayers deserve to know where their money is spent. The US Treasury Department should be able to provide a clear account of government spending as it is responsible for processing trillions in government payments per year. It has been revealed that the US Treasury has not been doing its part.
Americans provide the US Treasury Department with their hard-earned dollars every tax season, and throughout the year for that matter. The agency is tasked with managing the government’s finances, paying all government bills, and collecting taxes and duties. It supervises national banks and thrift institutions. The agency is supposed to aid in guiding international policy and maintaining relationships with foreign institutions and governments to maintain economic stability globally.
Who is in charge? Top civil servant at the Treasury, David Lebryk, unexpectedly left his office as soon as the DOGE investigation began. Lebryk forfeited his government pension and career instead of complying. He has since been replaced by Scott Bessent who has provided DOGE with access to the federal payments system.
As it turns out, the Treasury Department has not denied a request for payment in 22 years. So whenever a bureaucrat or government official wanted the Treasury Department to pay for something, the answer was always YES. Musk recently accused Treasury officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress.”
The establishment does not want transparency. Senator Elizabeth Warren penned a letter to Bessent to express her concern over the investigation. “It is extraordinarily dangerous to meddle with the critical systems that process trillions of dollars of transactions each year, are essential to preventing a default on federal debt, and ensure that tens of millions of Americans receive their Social Security checks, tax refunds and Medicare benefits,” wrote Ms. Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.
What are they hiding? Every search result will provide you with reasons why DOGE should not investigate the Treasury. Yet, funding revealed by independent watchdog agencies already provides us some insight.
RealClear Investigations found that the department paid out $1.3 billion in federal benefits to deceased individuals. FEMA has been granted $70 billion to pay for COVID-19 costs through 2026, but there is no current pandemic. Open the Books found that $38.7 million was spent on DEI hires. It has been revealed that IRS employees are above the law and owed a collective $50 million in unpaid taxes in 2023. Then we have asinine spending on programs like the dangerous National Institutes of Health. The US Treasury sent the NIH $33 million to operate a small island to study monkey behavior, and provided them an additional $3.7 million to research gambling behavior in monkeys. The University of Michigan received $12 million to test methamphetamine on monkeys, and a lab in Florida was awarded $477,000 to toy with hormones and create transgender monkeys.
People are outraged that Musk and his team have access to the US financial system, but what on Earth were the people with prior access permitting? Everyone with access has passed the same clearances and background checks. Amid America’s debt crisis it is paramount to provide transparency to the people. This search is trickling into other agencies as we are seeing with the likes of USAID. Perhaps this will be the term that Trump actually drains the swamp.
