Elon Musk's DOGE Alleges ID Code For $4.7 Trillion Federal Payments Missing, Says 'Traceability Almost Impossible...'

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Elon Musk led United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE ), has in a social media post claimed that the identification code details of nearly $4.7 trillion worth of federal payments are untraceable.

DOGE has been marching ahead with budget, spending and job cuts across federal departments, sometimes causing chaos and upheaval, as it seeks to fulfill Elon Musk 's promise to“slash US debt”.

The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), among other companies, has occupied central space in Donald Trump 's administration, despite being unelected to any government position. Elon Musk's involvement has often been criticised by Democratic lawmakers as an“over-reach” and“breach of democracy”.

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The post claimed that the space to define Treasury Access Symbol (TAS), which is used to identify and link Treasury payments to items has earlier optional and thus often“left blank”, making it“almost impossible” to trace. It added that this field is now mandatory to fill to“increase insight” into spends.

In a post on social media platform X early on February 18, DOGE's official account said:“The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (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. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going. Thanks to US Treasury for the great work.” (sic)

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The DOGE post comes days after Elon Musk 's own post on the US Treasury payments last week, where he claimed that the US government payments system's inefficiency is potentially leading to“over $100 billion fraud annually”.

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