Probably everyone here is against fraud. The same is probably true for the general population. But, to dig it out, means everyone will be under scrutiny wrt their SS and Medicare benefits. Do you have your papers in order?
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If accurate, this is extremely suspicious,” Musk wrote
Translation: If my swat team of 20-something year olds didn’t get things wrong.
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Expect Medicare to become part of the delay, deny, defend crowd of insurers
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Medicare Advantage is already over 50% of Medicare and expected to be 60% by 2030.
By simply assigning seniors a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan at age 65 and forcing them to “opt out” if they want traditional Medicare, you could get the 2030 number over 70%.
Americans are easily fooled. Just look at how many don’t wait until age 70 to take Social Security and leave $100,000 on the table.
intercst
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Interesting talk given by Musk today, about what they have been finding, if true. I agree with what he is saying about the necessity of proper accounting procedure, if that is, in fact, lacking, at Treasury. Are his assertions credible? I remember reading Iacocca’s recollections when he took over at Chrysler. Even though Chrysler had been run by accountants, for twenty years, there were no proper accounting controls at the company. No-one could tell Iacocca what it cost the company to do anything. So, yes, what Musk is saying about the lack of proper controls is plausible.
In short, I am supportive of what he is doing, if what he says he is doing, is true. Of course, the other side of the coin is who are they taking money away from, and who are they giving money to? Are things being defunded, for the same reason that the Kennedy Center has a new person in charge?
Pay no heed to the person sitting at the desk.
Steve
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We’ve known for years that that is the case with the DoD. It’s not a stretch to extend that to other departments. From November 2024:
Pentagon fails 7th audit in a row
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4992913-pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-but-says-progress-made/
The Pentagon on Friday failed its seventh audit in a row, with the nation’s largest government agency still unable to fully account for its more than $824 billion budget, though officials stress they are making good progress toward a clean audit in 2028…
The Pentagon has never passed an audit since the agency became legally obligated to carry them out in 2018.
DB2
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Yes it is.
A 10 second google search would show you otherwise. The fact that the DoD failing multiple audits is newsworthy (i.e. outside the norm) should be your first clue. If the Treasury was failing audits, it would also be newsworthy - and of course as smart as you are, you would have already linked to it.
https://oig.treasury.gov/reports/audit-and-evaluation
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“In short, I am supportive of what he is doing, if what he says he is doing, is true”
That is a mighty Big If. Why should the American People trust Musk ???
When DOGE investigates this, then they gain a small amount of credibility: ( yes, this is dated, but does anybody think it’s
not going on in this term ? )
The Secret Service spent nearly $2 million at Trump properties - CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
“The Secret Service has spent nearly $2 million of taxpayer money at Trump properties, literally paying Donald Trump for the right to protect him and his family,”
So Musk, and your underling Trump, show some leadership.
This is low hanging fruit, can cut out this waste in a heartbeat. I won’t hold my breath.
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Defense is clearly outside the norm, but even from the helicopter level there are other areas to look at. For example, we read that a quarter of the agencies covered by CFO did not get a “clean” report, the number of material weaknesses increased last year and almost half (47%) of the material weaknesses were outside the DOD.
https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/reports-statements/financial-report/2024/management-discussion-analysis-2024.pdf
Since the enactment of the CFO Act [1990] the federal financial management community has made significant progress in financial accounting and reporting. As shown in Table 10, for FY 2024, 18 of the 24 CFO Act agencies obtained an unmodified opinion from the independent auditors on their financial statements. In addition, 53 auditor-identified material weaknesses were identified for FY 2024, one more than in FY 2023. Twenty-eight of these material weaknesses are associated with DOD. The other 25 material weaknesses are associated with non-DOD agencies. Although virtually all federal agencies have adopted and maintained disciplined financial reporting operations, implemented effective internal controls over financial reporting, and integrated transaction processing with accounting records, weaknesses in financial management practices continue to prevent the government as a whole from achieving an audit opinion.
DB2
Agree. If only we had trained professional Inspector Generals that could help fix such.
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The departments have had IGs, for decades. I remember reading of staggering amounts of waste, for decades. We old phartz remember Senator Proxmire and his “golden fleece awards” for waste and corruption, in the 70s.
What Musk talks about in that piece is sound accounting principles. He was not grandstanding about nonsense about “woke”. I took a look at the piece, got interested in what he had to say, and watched the entire thing. If his claims are true, these issues certainly need to be corrected.
Steve
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Ya, Proxmire was an idiot. I posted about him just yesterday. See his golden fleece award on the screwworm.
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Throughout my career, Medicare was only surpassed by United Health in this department. Gave away more “free care” to Medicare because it was the right thing to do than short change the patient.
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…recent 5-year period and is estimating annual losses from fraud to be between $233 and $521 billion dollars.
…the result of many things—including overpayments, inaccurate recordkeeping, or even fraud.
Payment errors are a long-standing issue for the federal government. Over the last 20 fiscal years, it has made an estimated $2.7 trillion in such improper payments.
DB2
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Ayup. Musk has, as a target, $1T, ie cut the deficit in half. A lot of the things he talked about: payments on a contract continuing to be made, for years, after the contract ran out, for instance, if true, need to be cut. Thing is, every dollar that goes out, is someone’s profit, so the justified cuts will be difficult to make.
Steve
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lol, it’s pretty shocking that you are willing to trust the claims that come out of Musk’s mouth. I get that you are prefacing it with " if what he’s saying is true ".I expect that from a few of the posters here, but I have to admit I’m surprised by your take on it.
I look at it as " if Musk can prove he’s not lying, and his claims are validated by an impartial 3rd party, then it would be a good thing they uncovered this fraud"
I’m reminded of Covid, and Trump wanting to shut down all testing because the test results were making him look bad.
I trust Musk as much as I trust Trump, which is to say Not At All.
Soon, we can expect inflation numbers to either take a dive due to them being “massaged” by Trump, or for inflation numbers to no longer be released to the Public.
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Steve is always skeptical, Joe, but why aren’t you? The government itself tells us about waste and fraud in its organizations. Do you think it is less, more or about the same as the GAO tells us?
DB2
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I used to think such sentiment was “tin hat” but no longer.
Unfortunately, the release of inflation data is controlled by the BLS and BEA - part of the DOL.
The key tell would be the removal or the resignation of the current commissioner:
BEA is run out of the Dept of Commerce and is chaired by Vipin Arora.
Both have substantial budgets and employees, so another tell might be DOGE trying to eliminate them.
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Over the years, several people on this board have been confused whether I am a right winger, or a Commie.
As I said above, pay no heed to the person sitting at the desk in that video. Listen to what Musk is saying. If he was ranting that everything “DEI” or “woke” was, by definition, “waste, fraud, and abuse”, I would have dismissed what he was saying. But he was talking about applying sound principles of accounting. OK. You make a case for money leaking due to shoddy accounting, and I am willing to listen.
Remember his initial response to covid, when it was only in China? He chartered several airliners to fly to China, and evacuate the USians back to the US. The evacuees were then held in isolation at US military bases, until they were deemed uninfected. I agreed with that strategy 100%. It was only when covid started to threaten profits here, that it became a “hoax”.
I agreed, around August of 2019, when Trump was telling USian companies to get their supply chains out of China. Every dollar we send to China enables both their foreign aid, and military programs, to threaten USian hegemony. If the US loses hegemony, the US$ is no longer the reserve currency, and the US ends up a has been. I would vastly prefer to see the stuff we buy from China be sourced in Mexico, if cost prohibitive to produce in the US.
Remember when he was warning the western European countries to not buy gas from the Nord Stream II pipe? Since then, those countries have discovered the pitfalls of being dependent on Putin’s good will for energy. If they had switched to LNG, as Trump said, they could buy from anyone, and not be slaves to one regime.
Steve
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“Steve is always skeptical, Joe, but why aren’t you?”
I have a very healthy dose of skepticism toward both sides of the aisle ( although Musk has no side of the aisle ).
But my skepticism is at def-con-9 when it comes to Musk and Trump. The Fox In Charge of the Hen House comes to mind.
Bob, do you ever question some of the malarkey that is coming out of Trump’s mouth ? His entire campaign was 1 lie after another, why would I believe anything he puts in front of me ?
And if this is too political for this board, feel free to not answer. And I have no problem with my last couple of posts being pulled. I respect the posters on this board. Can’t say I understand or agree with them, but I do have respect.
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