Three Groups That Could Have Prevented the Stench Being Uncovered by DOGE

Ever since President Donald Trump took the oath of office for the second time, Americans have seen near-daily series of profoundly outrageous revelations by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiencies (DOGE).

Most Americans have known for decades that the federal government has long been wasting unbelievably huge amounts of tax dollars on spending that is nothing more than waste, fraud and abuse. But before DOGE, Americans had no idea of the actual scope of federal tax dollars being spent on Woke ideological crusades, failing social welfare programs, corrupt procurement, ideologically managed lawfare, benefit fraudsters, and pointless incompetence.

Two of the legions of revelations from DOGE stand out above everything else hereto revealed because they raise such a profoundly obvious question that does not seem to be being asked of the people who could have prevented these debacles decades ago.

First, there is the fact DOGE discovered very early on in its audit of the Treasury Department that an estimated $4.7 trillion worth of tax-funded checks have gone out the door with none of the required explanation of the purpose for the spending, the authorizing legislation or procurement process used.

Second, DOGE found at the Social Security Administration (SSA) the fact that checks were issued in 2021 to 270,000 non-citizens, and that total zoomed, without explanation for why, to 2.1 million in the last year of Joe Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office.

DOGE also found that 1.3 million of those non-citizens getting Social Security checks are also receiving Medicaid coverage. Perhaps most curiously, SSA issued 10 times as many new Social Security numbers in 2024 as it did in 2021. Getting a Social Security card can be the golden key to unlocking all kinds of additional official benefits including healthcare, food, rent subsidies, and others available from local, state and federal authorities.

These two examples prompt the question nobody in the Washington Establishment Elite seems to be asking at the moment: If DOGE could unearth these problems so quickly in 2025, what prevented at least one of the oversight committees of the Senate and House, the SSA Inspector-General (IG) and Treasury IG, or Biden or one of his predecessors from exposing these outrages?

The answer to the last group is obvious - Biden is the guy who opened the U.S. Southern Border with Mexico to permit millions of illegal immigrants to cross into this country.

He’s also the guy whose cognitive decline between 2021 and 2024 became increasingly obvious even as he, his family and his Democratic allies all insisted he was mentally sharper and working harder than anybody else in the White House. His predecessors mostly just talked about such problems but did nothing of substance about them.

As for the IGs, Gail Ennis was the SSA IG for most of the period in question, but she was frequently criticized for being less than an ideal manager. Maybe that had something to do with it, maybe not.

At the Treasury, the IG duties have been fulfilled on an acting basis for several years, as Biden failed to appoint a permanent IG, and President Donald Trump has not yet filled the vacancy. One might wonder why Biden thought nothing of leaving open the IG position at the very department issuing trillions of dollars in checks with no required coding?

What is crystal clear is the Inspectors-General Act of 1978 — one of Jimmy Carter’s most significant accomplishments — established these official enemies of waste, fraud and abuse with the responsibility for rooting out such problems. Let’s also not forget that this same question about the Treasury and SSA IGs can be addressed to the IGs at every other department and agency that has or will come under the DOGE audit attention.

Which leaves the congressional oversight committees in the Senate and House. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) chaired the House Oversight and Reform Committee during the 117th Congress, while James Comer (R-Ky.) took over the chairmanship in the 118th Congress and continues in the 119th Congress.

Over on the Senate side, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee was Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who continued in the 118th. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took over the panel in the 119th.

Both oversight panels held dozens of hearings that featured a host of expert witnesses, including more than a few who could speak to the issues of waste, fraud and abuse in particular departments and agencies. But neither the upper nor the lower chamber panels found what DOGE has found.

In their defense, the threat of congressional oversight was seriously blunted during the Biden administration because Democrats controlled both chambers in 2021-22, and the Biden White House was determinedly uncooperative with Republican investigators in 2023-24.

But executive branch resistance is a weak defense for a legislative body that has the ultimate constitutional authority in a showdown with either the executive or judicial branches - Congress decides how many tax dollars a department or agency spends and what it spends those tax dollars on.

Two things need to happen soon or congressional oversight will become little more than a distant memory: Somebody who defies a congressional subpoena needs to go to jail and a department or agency whose employees refuse to provide documents demanded by congressional investigators must be defunded until full compliance is restored.

More to come here on this latter subject in subsequent columns.