DOGE Says $4.7 Trillion In Treasury Payments Missing Code To Trace Where Money Went

About $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a code that allowed them to be tracked, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project.

DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, announced its discovery on X.

“The Treasury [Account] Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process),” the post said. “In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going.”

The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process).

In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost…

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 17, 2025

Musk also touted the announcement, calling it a “[m]ajor improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”

“This was a combined effort of @DOGE, @USTreasury and @FederalReserve,” Musk added. “Nice work by all.”

Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!

This was a combined effort of @DOGE, @USTreasury and @FederalReserve. Nice work by all. https://t.co/MDJXS4oaqP

— Elon Musk ???? (@Elonmusk49018) February 19, 2025

The Treasury Department was one of the first agencies DOGE looked into following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the New York Post reported. DOGE is looking for waste, fraud, and abuse, and said it has so far exposed billions of wasted taxpayer dollars. Just recently, DOGE said it could save taxpayers “at least $750 million” a year by “deleting paper checks.”

DOGE said that the Treasury Department has to keep a “physical lockbox” to collect more than 100 million checks it processes each year, according to the Post, costing taxpayers around $2.40 per check to maintain. In fiscal year 2023, DOGE found, around $25 billion in tax refunds were lost or delayed because of returned or expired checks.

“This is not some roving band … This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Bloomberg TV last week, referring to DOGE’s efforts.

The Treasury is not the only department DOGE has scrutinized in the first few weeks of the Trump administration. It has focused heavily on USAID, which spent millions of dollars on DEI and left-wing politics around the world and even paid the college tuition of an Al-Qaeda terrorist who lied about his resident country.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently praised DOGE’s work, saying it was effectively an outside audit exposing hidden expenses.

“We are applauding that, this is what we have been wanting and trying to do for a long time,” Johnson said. “So this is a good development. I wish the courts would allow the executive and the legislative branches to work, but we’ll see how all that develops.”