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The newly launched Department of Government Efficiency announced that an estimated $4.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury payments were missing the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), a critical identification code linking payments to a budget line item, which made it "almost impossible" to trace the transactions.
"The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process)," the agency wrote on its X account on Monday (February 17). "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."
DOGE was launched by President Donald Trump's administration to limit waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government with billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, X and Neuralink, serving as the agency's leader.
Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live! This was a combined effort of @DOGE, @USTreasury and @FederalReserve. Nice work by all," Musk wrote on his X account in response to DOGE's post.
Last week, DOGE fired thousands of employees as part of downsizing efforts. The majority of firings made so far have affected recently hired employees still on probation at departments including Veterans Affairs, Education and the Small Business Administration. Officials representing the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal hiring, met with government agencies on Thursday and advised them to fire employees who are still on probation, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed.
On Tuesday (February 12), Musk defended the firings as he claimed the U.S. shouldn't be run by a "bureaucracy."
“If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a Democracy. We live in a bureaucracy,” Musk said while speaking next Trump in the Oval Office via the New York Post.