Speaking in an interview with Jesse Watters, Elon Musk and a number of volunteers his Department of Government Efficiency team exposed some of the big issues they have found as they dig into federal spending, not least of which is that merely demanding those requesting a payment attach a receipt has cut out huge amounts of fraud.
That came as Elon and fellow DOGE volunteers described how the Treasury Department’s payment system was making payments for some programs without asking those who were demanding money of it to attach documentation, and that it didn’t connect payments made to the budget, making it hard to figure out where the money was going and for what purpose.
Beginning, they noted that the Treasury Department system paid out without connecting those payments to the budget, saying, “The computers at Treasury pay about $5 trillion per year. When payments are made, there was formerly not a budget code on there. So if a payment was made you didn’t know what it was for.”
Continuing, they described to Watters how one massive spending program that didn’t even require receipts, meaning payments were made without verification, leading to obscene waste and fraud. He said, “There was a $4 billion COVID fund in the Department of Education. There were no receipts required, so people could just draw down on it.”
Giving examples of how the money was wasted via that fraud, they went on to note that some even used the taxpayer dollars they stole to rent out Caesar’s Palace and stadiums for parties. He said, “They found out money was being used to rent out Caesar’s Palace for parties, rent out stadiums, etc.”
Then, turning from the problem to solutions, they explained that DOGE implemented a simple system requiring receipts to be uploaded for payouts to be made, which solved the multi-billion-dollar problem, saying, “So the one change that DOGE made was the simple requirement that if you drawdown money, you must first upload a receipt, and upon doing so, nobody drew down any money anymore.”
Explaining what was going on the fraud problem, they added that the refusal to deal with it when it was small meant that it soon ballooned into a massive issue, saying, “Generally, the fraud starts out small and they try to hide it. But year after year, if nobody stops the fraud, it gets more and more brazen, and every year it gets bigger until they are literally renting out stadium.” Watch him here:
"*" indicates required fields
🚨 NEW: @elonmusk and @DOGE expose that taxpayer money was spent renting out Caesars Palace and stadiums—for parties.
“The computers at Treasury pay about $5 trillion per year. When payments are made, there was formerly not a budget code on there. So if a payment was made you… pic.twitter.com/z0apk2qDcx
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) May 2, 2025
Commenters online were furious. One, for example, noted that small business owners are treated harshly, much in contrast to the fraudsters, saying, “WTH! The people owning businesses have to account for every little [expenditure] when audited and the government just spend the tax money on this? Thanks DOGE for exposing this.”
Similarly, another commenter noted that it is amazing that such a simple step could be implemented to crack down on fraud and that it wasn’t taken before DOGE, saying, “Amazing that DOGE took such a simple yet powerful step to stop wasteful spending. This is how you make a difference! 🔥”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video