Elon and the DOGE team met with Bret Baier, and it is very helpful seeing and hearing the DOGE team. They discussed findings at the Social Security Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Health, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of the Interior.
Bret Baier asked Elon what the DOGE goal is.
MUSK: Our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. So, from a nominal deficit of two trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to one trillion. Or looked at in total federal spending, to drop the federal spending from seven trillion to six trillion. We want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and fraud and reducing the spending by 15 percent. Which seems really quite achievable. The government is not efficient, and there’s a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15 percent reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services. In fact, making it better.
40% of SSA Calls Are From Fraudsters
Engineer Aram Moghaddassi is working on accessing federal computers. The improvements they are trying to make to Social Security will help people who legitimately get benefits and protect them from daily fraud. They want to improve the experience.
Moghaddassi said that the Social Security Administration receives phone calls every day from people trying to get them to change their banking information. DOGE has discovered that 40 percent of those calls are from fraudsters, some of whom are undoubtedly foreigners.
This happens all day, every day.
As an example of areas that can be exploited, over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 are marked as alive in the Social Security system. It has been identified as a problem at least since 2008.
Computers Don’t Talk to Each Other: A Loophole for Fraud
Baier asked: “What’s the most astonishing thing you’ve found out in this process?”
MUSK: The ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don’t talk to each other. So, if the computer systems don’t talk to each other, then you can exploit that gap. And fraudsters exploit that gap and take advantage.
Rocket scientist Steve Davis, the CEO of DOGE, said he thinks most Americans would think saving the country from bankruptcy is a “good thing,” and they are willing to put their lives on hold for it. They feel it can be done.
They said it could not have been successful without this President and Cabinet.
Joe Gebbi, the Airbnb founder, is restructuring the federal retirement process. Instead of months, it will take days. It’s an injustice to civil servants to subject them to a 70-year-old process.
Universities Get Too Much Money
DOGE Brad Smith is working at HHS. Grants that go to researchers give about 60% to universities and only 40% to researchers. They want to change that equation to 15% to universities. That way more money goes to scientists coming up with the cures. He added that NIH has over 700 IT systems, and none of the computers talk to each other. They have 27 CIOs, most are non-technical. He said, if you want to make great discoveries, you have to connect the data.
The government has old, failing computers that don’t talk to each other.
There is a lot more. Maybe this will help enlighten the Democrat leadership. Un, no, that was silly.
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