The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hit the ground running after President Donald Trump was inaugurated and hasn’t stopped for a breath since.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse have been found by the DOGE team and are being reported to the appropriate agency. Each agency can then make decisions on what to cut or what processes to change. DOGE is not just about cutting out of mission expenses and waste, but also looks into the processes the federal government uses. Many processes are so out of date they can’t even be fixed. Entire systems simply need to be replaced with modern software.
DOGE found some real doozies in the past week.
- DOGE found that at least 9,700 unemployment forms were filed by people not even born yet. The filers were born 15 years in the future, and at least one filer said they were born in 2154. The 9,700 claims amounted to a total of $69 million.
New York along with California and Massachusetts collectively gave out more than $300M in improper unemployment payments over the last four years. Perhaps not surprisingly, all three states have what’s called a Democrat trifecta - Democrats control the state House, Senate and the governor's office. Democrats also control the Attorney Generals office and Secretary of State of all three states.
"This is another incredible discovery by the DOGE team, finding nearly $400 million in fraudulent unemployment payments. The Labor department is committed to recovering Americans’ stolen tax dollars. We will catch these thieves and keep working to root out egregious fraud," said Labor Department Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
- $51 million was cut from the US African Development Foundation that included $229,000 to marketing shea butter in Burkina Faso, $240,000 for pineapple juice marketing in Benin, and $246,000 for mango drying facilities on the Ivory Coast. DOGE isn’t passing judgment that these activities have no value, but rather that using the tax dollars of hardworking Americans on these things is not appropriate.
- DOGE also found that "despite having no other legal status, paroled aliens are able to file for work authorization and receive social security numbers.” Under the Biden Administration, illegal immigrants with criminal or terrorist records received public benefits. Some illegal aliens were collecting Medicaid, unemployment, federal student loans, SNAP benefits, and tax refunds.
- 41 collecting Unemployment Insurance, receiving $42k in benefits
- 22 received federal student loans totaling $280k
- 409 received {net} tax refunds (2024 only) for $751k
- Several (final number TBD) received SNAP (food stamp) benefits
- "Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening. So far, CBP identified a subset of 6.3k individuals paroled into the United States since 2023 on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center watchlist or with criminal records. These paroles have since been terminated with immediate effect," read a DOGE post on X.