DOGE discovers $4.7 trillion in Treasury payments were missing critical code: ‘Traceability almost impossible’

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.” 

The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol, or TAS, an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as 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,” read an X post from DOGE.

The Elon Musk-led project to curb waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government said in light of the discovery use of the TAS code is now mandatory. 

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, thanking the Treasury Department for its “great work” implementing the change. 

Musk touted the change 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 facilitates trillions of dollars worth of government payments every year, was one of the first agencies DOGE embedded itself in after President Trump’s inauguration. 

DOGE staffers at Treasury have been granted access to the department’s highly sensitive payment systems in an effort to root out 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 said of DOGE during a Bloomberg TV interview last week. 

DOGE recently proposed “deleting paper checks” at Treasury, arguing that it would save taxpayers “at least $750 million per year.”

The initiative noted that the Treasury Department must keep “a physical lockbox” to collect the more than 100 million checks it processes each year, which costs about $2.40 per check to maintain. 

In fiscal year 2023, some $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost due to returned or expired checks, according to DOGE.