There are two portals of money in every institution: money coming in and money going out. Keeping track of that in both directions is the key to operations. The final number can reveal profits or losses, surpluses or deficits. Regardless, the accounting books are the beating heart of every institution.
Accounting means accountability, holding people to account for their work.
This is why the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formed by Elon Musk with a business-based mindset, sets its sights on two primary institutions in the federal government: the U.S. Treasury payment systems and the revenue agency. That is where the money goes out and where the money comes in.
Tying these together and tracing the funds with normal accounting standards is the key to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. This is all about verifying what is true. It’s not enough just to look at printouts of Congressional budgets or long spreadsheets published by some other agency. The only way to discern what is absolutely true is to go to the source.
The penetration of both ends of this have generated astonishing results, among which that many millions of Social Security recipients are apparently not alive. Or maybe they are and this is just a recordkeeping error. They are going to find out one way or another.
The most shocking revelation from the very limited look at the U.S. Treasury books that judges have permitted DOGE concerns proper tagging of expenditures. They have documented that $4.7 trillion in government spending is not tagged with what’s called a Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) that ties the spending to a Congressional authorization.
It is absolutely shocking to understand that the federal state has not been following GAAP rules of accounting!!! That is the only way to make any sense of whatever money is being spent and how it was spent and if it was properly spent. DOGE is doing no more than going into the books and examining them in an auditing function to see where money is coming from, where it is going and for what purpose. But, they find that the Treasury cannot account for $4.7T, to everyone's shock. They don't even know when the $4.7T was spent, this year, last year, or during another budgetary time period. Perhaps this is why some people are upset about DOGE examining the books!! I guess those benefiting from the corruption and graft will be missing their gravy train and are shrieking like banshees over it.