The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed on Monday that approximately $4.7 trillion in Treasury Department payments lacked an essential tracking code, making it nearly impossible to trace the transactions.
These payments were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), which is a crucial identification code linking Treasury payments to specific budget line items, as stated by DOGE. The agency emphasized that the use of this code is considered a “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,” DOGE wrote in an X post.
Elon Musk’s initiative to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government announced that, following this discovery, the TAS code would now be a mandatory requirement.
“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, offering thanks to the Treasury Department for its “great work” in implementing the change.
Musk praised the new requirement as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”
“This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve],” Musk tweeted. “Nice work by all.”
The Treasury Department, which handles trillions of dollars in government payments annually, was one of the first agencies that DOGE collaborated with after President Trump’s inauguration.
DOGE personnel at the Treasury Department have been given access to the agency’s highly classified payment systems to help eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.
“This is not some roving band … This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated during a Bloomberg TV interview last week, referring to DOGE.
Recently, DOGE proposed eliminating paper checks at the Treasury Department, suggesting that doing so could save taxpayers “at least $750 million per year.”
The initiative pointed out that the Treasury must maintain “a physical lockbox” to manage over 100 million checks processed annually, at a cost of about $2.40 per check.
In fiscal year 2023, DOGE reported that approximately $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost due to checks being returned or expired.
{Matzav.com}
