Our federal government spends more than $1.7 billion a year to maintain 77,000 empty buildings.
A study by the Heritage Foundation once found a missing $25 billion in “unreconciled transactions affecting the change in net position.” In English, that means $25 billion that was spent by someone, somewhere on something, but auditors do not know who spent it, where it was spent or on what.
When President Biden decided to spend $320 million on a giant pier outside Gaza to deliver food trucks, the pier was broken apart by strong winds and heavy seas in its first week. Hey, what’s another $320 million when it’s not your money?
Whenever I see public servants squandering taxpayer money, that’s exactly what I want to scream: It’s not your money!
Of course, these public servants are rarely held accountable for what they do with the money that isn’t theirs. The system is such that they have no incentive to be prudent, let alone thrifty. I guarantee you they’d be a lot more careful if indeed it was their money.
I know, so far I haven’t told you anything really new. Saying that government squanders money is like saying that politics is divisive.
So I’m happy to relay that a group of fiscal commandos is bringing a ray of hope to our nation’s #1 problem.
According to news reports, Elon Musk and his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) team have identified a little-known but critical federal office, run out of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, that is responsible for disbursing more than one billion payments annually, representing $5.4 trillion, or 88 percent of all federal payments.
The public servant who oversees these payments, David Lebryk, left his job last week after more than 35 years of working for the government.
Evidently, he wasn’t very cooperative with the DOGE team that sought access to the Treasury computers that process all these payments. The “fiscal commandos” need that access in order to identify fraud, abuse and waste, which sounds like common sense to me.
And as I write this, it was just announced that the new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, gave DOGE full access to the system.
Wait a minute: Am I dreaming?
Seriously, you can be the biggest Trump hater in the world, and be repulsed by his blizzard of executive orders, and still be in awe at this bold initiative to monitor where $5.8 trillion of your money is going.
I don’t know how must waste Musk’s team will be able to trim, but I’m pretty sure that in Lebryk’s 35 years of public service, no one ever asked him those kinds of questions or for that kind of access. In fact, for decades now, leaders from both parties have virtue signaled their alarm at our fiscal time bomb but never had the guts to do anything. Much easier to kick the can down the road and just print more money.
It’s not as if the red flags weren’t staring them in the face.
During the 2023 fiscal year, the Government Accountability Office estimated that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs. They report this stuff year after year but no reforms are made and our runaway debt just gets exponentially worse. Musk suspects the government is sending out hundreds of billions to people who either do not exist or are fraudsters. His aim is to cut the waste, not just report it.
For my friends on the left who despise Musk because he helped put “Hitler” back in the White House and now has too much power, put your emotions aside and consider this state of affairs: In 2023, we paid $659 billion just in interest on the national debt, a 38 percent increase versus 2022. The Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $2 trillion in debt annually for the next decade; over $5 billion of debt every day for the next ten years. That’s a ticking time bomb where the fuse has been lit.
So next time you teach your kids the value of money and the importance of not wasting it, tell them that their country, regardless of political party, borrows $200 million every hour, $3 million every minute and $60,000 every second.
You can bash Musk and Trump all you want, but something unprecedented has begun. The genius behind Tesla, Space X and Starlink is on a mission to demolish government waste, protect our money and Make America Solvent Again.
If he can get this fiscal rocket off the ground, we the taxpayers will put public servants across the nation on notice: The party’s over. We’re watching you. It’s our money you’re playing with, and you better not throw it away.
