Elon Musk says the Treasury Department has agreed to comply with his Department of Government Efficiency recommended changes despite a federal judge’s attempts to block his efforts.
DOGE is shaking up multiple facets of the federal government by slashing spending and even shuttering agencies – Musk and President Donald Trump agreed last week to close-up USAID and fire all 10,000 employees.
A federal judge prevented Musk’s group from accessing Treasury systems, which the billionaire says was an attempt to make it easier to audit the department so he could save the U.S. government money.
Musk went on a tirade and condemned the judge’s ruling this week as ‘insane.’
The Tesla and SpaceX boss outlined on his social media website X over the weekend how he plans to make changes at the Treasury Department without being permitted access.
Trump’s new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk and DOGE access to the department’s payment system on January 31 – just three days after he was sworn-in to the new position.
But the new ruling stops Musk from accessing the system which contains millions of Americans’ personal tax information and annually sends out $6 trillion to federal agencies.
Elon Musk says the Treasury Department has agreed to implement his recommended changes after a federal judge blocked him for accessing the agency’s payment system which contains millions of Americans’ personal tax information and annually sends out $6 trillion to federal agencies
There are three major agreements DOGE and Treasury reached that Musk says just ‘make sense.’
The first requires any federal government payments to have a categorization code to improve audit abilities.
Additionally, the Treasury Department under new Secretary Scott Bessent’s leadership agreed to include rationale for any payments when they are approved. Musk says this comment field is often left blank without any attempt for explanation of payment.
The final agreement is to make sure the Treasury is not ignoring the ‘do-not-pay list,’ which includes entities known to be fraudulent or out-of-line with congressional appropriations.
‘This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily,’ he added.
‘The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from DOGE,’ Musk insisted. ‘It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!’
Musk said he was informed on Friday that there are more than $100 billion of entitlement payments sent to people without any social security number every year.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk access to the system just three days after he was sworn-in to his new role
Musk outlined three agreements that Treasury Department will implement without the interference of his DOGE staffers
Musk says that there is an estimate of ‘unequivocal and obvious fraud’ that amounts to $1 billion every week in the U.S.
‘If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,’ he wrote on X, adding that the estimate of ‘unequivocal and obvious fraud’ amounts to $1 billion every week.
‘This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.’
Musk says that no one at the Treasury Department cared before to do anything about making sure they were complying with the law and preventing fraudulent payments from being distributed.
‘Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain[t] minimization,’ he said. ‘People [who] receive money don’t complain, but people who don’t receive money (especially fraudsters) complain very loudly, so the fraud was allowed to continue.’
