“Waste, fraud, and abuse” describes the symptoms, but gross, widespread mismanagement within the federal government defines the cause. Myriad examples of institutional neglect were conveyed to stunned listeners who tuned into Brett Baer’s recent interview with Elon Musk and his team leaders. These successful, mature businessmen unemotionally described the world’s largest organization operating on outdated internal systems that could only be sustained by feeding it with an ever-increasing $1.8 trillion annual deficit. The full interview can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZfotdjNi-M
The U.S. population has doubled since 1950, from 151 million to 347 million by 2025. Each administration adds more functions, agencies, benefits, and services, however, the systems, procedures, and coordination among them have not kept pace with the changes. The government’s organizational chart creates no direct line of accountability and coordination among the departments. The lack of overall ‘corporate’ management prevents correcting these organizational anomalies. These systematic weaknesses open the doors for waste, fraud, and abuse. Therefore, with these built-in issues, the cost of running our government, which produces almost $2 trillion of annual budget deficits, is approaching unsustainability.
For example, U.S. citizens’ retirement decisions are processed manually in a massive tunnel by U.S. governmental workers operating with an all-paper system unchanged since the 1950s when the location was created. Thousands of employees working in a place they affectionately call the ‘Mine’ can only process 8,000 retirements each month, reminiscent of Bob Cratchit’s accounting office in eighteenth-century England. One person’s retirement account was found to require a pallet to carry the volume of paper within it. Retirement accounts take from six to nine months to process.
The U.S. Treasury paid all government expenditures for all departments from a single bank account without requiring account payment identification, thus creating an open door for anyone to access the Treasury.
The Small Business Administration requires recipients to furnish a Social Security number when filing for a loan validated by the Social Security Administration, however, the Agency will not provide any other information. Without more official personal information, improper loans are made to recipients as young as nine months.
The federal government employs approximately 2.3 million people. Over 4.6 million government credit cards were found to be active.
The Department of Health and Human Services was found to have 27 separate centers, each with a CEO, and 40 communications officers.
12,000,000 Social Security recipients 120 years or older were found in their active roles. Dead people were found to be receiving Social Security and Disability checks.
In addition to these and other structural issues uncovered, the team began terminating expenditures that did not conform to Administration policies. These specifics are found on the www.doge.gov website, updated daily with the more outrageous grants often mentioned daily in news reports. Examples of those types of grants include:
- $10 million for “gender equity in the Mexican workplace”
- $12.2 million for “worker empowerment in South America”
- $280 million contract that was over budget and 5 years behind schedule
- $620K for “an LGB+ intensive teen pregnancy program for transgender boys
- $903K for alpaca farming in Peru
- $323K to promote understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil
Elon Musk and his team are correcting each of these situations. They are finding $4 billion daily, seven days a week, and have already eliminated $130 billion. Musk believes that his group can reduce government expenditure by 15 percent, or from approximately $7 trillion annually to $6 trillion.
An organization as loosely managed as the U.S. government using obsolete systems makes an attractive target for modern scammers to join the ranks of the very wealthy with minimum risk of receiving free room and board in a nearby federal facility. No risk of incarceration exists for the political insiders who milk the system as government “contractors” of dubious public value.
Without updated systems and accountability, our $36 trillion direct national debt will begin squeezing out our government’s ability to provide the necessary means to continue our prosperity and our nation’s leadership in a dangerous world. Political power, greed, and ideology have led our elected representatives to on sabbaticals ,unwilling to address these issues by blocking any significant federal reforms. As a result, no one has been minding the store, leading us into the mess we find our government now in.
Eight highly qualified citizens with broad business experience have interrupted their careers with no pay to clean up the mess and no visible political axes to grind. Their work is highly transparent for those willing to judge for themselves. Critics should either lead, follow, or get out of the way!
TW3
April 3, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
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