In the first few weeks of President Trump’s second term, the Trump administration has unleashed a barrage of executive orders and other actions intended to dizzy his detractors. So far, he has been successful. However, his opposition has taken a unique interest in President Trump’s efforts to streamline government. President Trump has tasked Elon Musk and a team of tech gurus—under the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”)—to perform “audits” of key federal agencies by examining their expenditures and identifying fraudulent or wasteful spending.

Thus far, DOGE has introduced the American public to countless examples of wasteful spending. Senator Joni Ernst highlighted some of this waste: USAID “authorized a whopping $20 million to create a Sesame Street in Iraq.” Like many of you, my X feed has been filled with countless similar examples. Remarkably, the public disclosure of this wasteful spending and the Trump administration pausing USAID’s operations has sent Democrats into a frenzy. To most Americans, the United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”) is an obscure agency that plays little to no role in domestic affairs. So why are the Democrats and institutionalist Republicans (i.e., Mitch McConnell) so concerned?

For the first time, the White House is ordering a top-to-bottom review of all agency expenditures for key government agencies, including Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, USAID, Treasury’s Fiscal Service payment system. We expect that the list of agencies under review will continue to expand. As an auditor, I find this entire situation relatable. During an audit, the auditee generally wants to share as little information as possible to avoid opening themselves up to anything that could result in undue risks to the organization. In this case, we are witnessing DOGE perform audits of federal expenditures at a scale never seen before.

With annual expenditures of nearly $7 trillion (for fiscal year 2024), or close to 25 percent of Gross Domestic Product, the federal government artificially stimulates several sectors of the economy, in some cases for years. Only $4.9 trillion of that $7 trillion was financed by federal revenues, which means that the difference was financed by borrowing (i.e., debt). To put this in perspective, in September 2019 (prior to the massive government deficits run throughout the pandemic), the federal government owed over $183,000 per taxpayer in debt. No doubt that the $7 trillion in annual expenditures is rife with special interest handouts, fraud, and corruption.

In recent years, there have been several notable examples of massive fraud schemes related to government expenditures. For example, in July 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that private health insurers pocketed $50 billion from Medicare for diseases that no doctor treated. The Wall Street Journal also reported that “insurer-driven diagnoses by UnitedHealth for diseases that no doctor treated generated $8.7 billion in 2021 payments to the company.”

Similarly, the Department of Justice has been aggressively prosecuting cases of fraud or non-compliance with the parameters of the Paycheck Protection Program. As you may recall, the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) was started in the early days of the covid pandemic to provide emergency funds for essential expenses, such as payroll. According to Perkins Coie, 95 percent of the $793 billion of the expenditures were “forgiven” or paid off by taxpayers (a scandal in and of itself). The Small Business Administration’s Inspector General identified around $4.6 billion in potentially fraudulent loans. Note that this figure does not include the total funds accepted by those celebrities least likely to need the funds. According to CNBC, around $80 billion of the PPP funds were disbursed to fraudsters, as well an additional $170 billion from other covid relief programs.

These two massive examples of fraudulent government spending are only the tip of the iceberg. Elon Musk’s DOGE will continue to expose countless more similar examples as they continue to move from agency to agency. For years, progressive activists have called for reductions in federal spending on the Department of Defense and other law enforcement institutions. As of February 2024, the Pentagon failed its sixth audit. Perhaps if DOGE were to perform a similar audit of defense spending, some reform-minded Democrats will form a brief alliance with the Trump administration. Regardless, the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE have struck a chord with lots of Amerians who are seeing this waste.

The level of histrionics and panic emanating from Democrats, progressive non-profits, the corporate media, and other progressive allies is a tell-tale sign that the administration is damaging the power of permanent Washington by both bringing transparency to and cutting wasteful or corrupt federal expenditures buried deeply within each agency. DOGE’s efforts so far expose a significant reason for the panic. Writes Tho Bishop,

From the billions spent on USAID money is a network of administrators, directors, and consultants who have been able to create lucrative lives for themselves by embedding themselves into a network of patronage entirely reliant upon the regime’s plunder of the public.

For those of us on the outside looking in, we can only wish Elon Musk and DOGE continue to be successful in exposing fraud, corruption, and waste.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article do not reflect the views of my employer and are not endorsed by my employer.