Gerrard Kaonga
Elon Musk’s DOGE is already making waves after they recently made a shocking claim in a post online.
Elon Musk has been a very visible figure in Donald Trump’s administration since he returned to the White House last month, especially with his work in DOGE, the Department of Government of Efficiency.
The Department of Government Efficiency took to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday (February 17) to explain their findings and how a change they are going to implement will aid transparency.
They claimed that $4.7 trillion dollars of treasury payments could not be completely traced and changes would be made to ensure this isn’t the case in the future.
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In a post, they wrote: “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 @USTreasury for the great work."
TAS codes are used to describe any one of the account identification codes assigned by the Treasury, according to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Musk praised this change on his own Twitter post, saying it was a ‘major improvement in Treasury payment integrity'.
He added: “This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve]. Nice work by all.”
Back in December last year, Trump said that Musk would lead the department saying: “I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency.”
Since Vivek’s departure, Trump has referred to Musk as its leader repeatedly.
However, the White House has recently said that Musk does not actually work as an employee of DOGE.
The White House said in a court filing Musk has no decision-making authority and can only advise the president and relay directives.
“Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.
“In his role as senior advisor to the president, Mr Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors.
"Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.”
According to Director of the Office of Administration at the White House, Joshua Fischer, Musk holds the title of ‘non-career special government employee’ and serves as a senior adviser to the president.