DOGE Says $4.7 Trillion in Treasury Payments Missing Identification Codes

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk walking into the White House grounds in Washington on Feb. 13, 2025. Travis Gillmore/The Epoch Times

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on Feb. 17 that a total of $4.7 trillion worth of payments from the Treasury Department are almost impossible to trace because of missing account identification codes.

DOGE said the Treasury Department has assigned identification codes called Treasury Access Symbols (TAS), designed to note which account a Treasury payment is linked to, which DOGE said was a “standard financial process” for bookkeeping. However, the codes were not assigned for trillions of dollars worth of payments as the field was considered optional, according to the agency.

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE stated on the social media platform X.

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going. Thanks to U.S. Treasury for the great work.”

According to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, TAS codes are identification codes assigned by the Treasury to “an individual appropriation, receipt, or other fund account.”

It stated that all financial transactions made by the federal government are typically classified using a TAS code for reporting to the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget.

Savings Found

DOGE, headed by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, also proposed on Monday to eliminate paper checks at the Treasury to help save U.S. taxpayers’ money.

According to the advisory commission created by President Donald Trump, the Treasury processed 116 million paper checks in the fiscal year 2024 and stored them in a lockbox. The estimated cost of maintaining the lockbox is $2.40 per check, it stated.

DOGE also stated that some $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost due to return of expired checks during the fiscal year 2023.

“Deleting paper checks would save at least $750 million per year,” the commission stated on social media platform X.

Trump replaced the existing United States Digital Service with DOGE and asked the commission to review federal agencies for potential downsizing and cost reductions. Trump would have to approve any proposals made by DOGE, which only has a fact-finding and advisory function.

To conduct audits, DOGE has been granted access to federal systems, sparking legal challenges from some Democratic lawmakers and labor unions who argued the access is unconstitutional.

DOGE reported that it found an estimated total savings of $55 billion on Feb. 17, which it said would come from a mix of “fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”

“We are working to upload all of this data in a digestible and fully transparent manner with clear assumptions, consistent with applicable rules and regulations,” DOGE stated on its website.

As of Feb. 17, DOGE placed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) first in its list of top 10 agencies based on total contract savings, followed by the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management. DOGE said its reporting website will be updated twice per week.

Attorneys general from 14 states filed a lawsuit on Feb. 13 challenging the Trump administration’s delegation of government access to Musk. The coalition, led by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, alleged that the “sweeping authority” granted by the administration to Musk is unconstitutional because he has not been confirmed by the Senate.

The attorneys general asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order barring Musk and DOGE from making any changes to the disbursement of public funds, canceling government contracts, accessing sensitive agency data, and altering agency data systems.

Trump told reporters at the White House earlier in February that Musk “can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate; where not appropriate, we won’t.”

“He reports in,” the president said.

Musk told reporters at the White House on Feb. 11 that Trump and the GOP’s ability to win a government trifecta in the 2024 election was a broader mandate for DOGE’s efforts.

“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what people are going to get,” the tech billionaire said. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

The White House previously said that Musk is a special government employee under the Trump administration. The position means that Musk’s service would only be temporary.

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.