February 11, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

DOGE Uncovers $50B Annually Sent to People Without SSNs—Why Didn't Congress Reveal This?

By Rick Manning

$50 to $100 billion a year, that is how much has already been identified by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency through a review of Treasury payments as likely fraud. This amount is nothing more than identifying how much is paid monthly to recipients who don’t have a Social Security number or other government identification attached to their files.

In a world of cartels and other foreign government criminal enterprises, it is not surprising that very smart, organized attacks have been made to steal from the American taxpayer. After all, it is as simple as Willie Sutton’s answer to the question of why he robbed banks, “because that’s where the money is.”

DOGE head Elon Musk has already estimated, based upon work done to date, that there is approximately $1 trillion in fraud, waste and abuse in the system that can be identified and prevented. It took two weeks of analyzing the government payment systems to make this incredible pronouncement.

It is surprising that the various systems that are in place to ostensibly prevent fraud failed so spectacularly, and it is fair to wonder if some of those in charge of them were part of the steal? After all, the question of valid identification in our election systems has been a hot button issue for at least a decade, it never occurred to those outside of government that the payment system did not require valid identification to receive government benefits. Who decided to not worry about requiring ID to receive a government check? 

And as recent Democrat-led lawsuits have shown, these systems are run by long-time career bureaucrats who apparently have not been doing their jobs very well. The fact lawsuit after lawsuit is being filed to prevent employees of the White House directly appointed by the President access to the payment systems reveals the lack of accountability which the nameless, faceless and highly compensated federal bureaucrats have traditionally enjoyed.

However, it is fair to ask what the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees have been doing over the past twenty years? Where was their spending oversight? Why have they not forced these systems to be opened up for public review so they could dig deep into the spending on authorized programs to determine whether they are being administered properly and that the taxpayer has been getting their monies worth.

In short, why didn’t Congress tell us about all of the wasteful spending that only now the Treasury’s payment systems’ data is now revealing?

The answer may be as simple as they messed up by trusting those entrusted with protecting the treasure of the United States, and the hired guards let them down. But another aspect is that Congress does not have access to this information simply because they never passed a law making public access all of the layers of government spending mandatory.

This isn’t about whether various programs that are riddled with fraud should exist, but whether they should cost what the taxpayer is being charged? And the answer is clearly no, not even close.

This doesn’t even count the misuse of USAID funds, Ukraine spending, the breadth of Medicaid spending or big ticket Department of Defense items that are subject to political debate and determination. Those should have a full political review by both Congress and the White House. What is being revealed by DOGE is plain and simple theft of taxpayer dollars.

As someone who has been advocating for limited government for my entire professional life, I always instinctively knew that there was some level of graft and corruption, but the level being revealed in just a short amount of time and the elaborate networks to hide it are absolutely stunning. Having confirmed the worst suspicions of those who have railed against the cost of government for years, the question is what can be done about it?

First and foremost, Congress needs to increase financial auditors and investigators in its employ to ask the right questions and demand answers prior to appropriating the taxpayer’s dollars. Rather than operating off of a budgeting platform that assumes the current level as the baseline, they need to force every administration to justify every dollar spent on a program rather than signing a virtual blank check — and pass laws mandating more of this information be posted publicly.

This is more than a DOGE committee designed to get headlines but with no power to fix anything. It is a real reform where Congress grows up to its 21st century responsibility to oversee a $7 trillion operation with real financial oversight.

Elon Musk, for his part, has described a series of systems that are designed to be unaccountable to those reviewing the spending without artificial intelligence to connect the disparate dots. Congress needs to work with the U.S. DOGE Service to ensure that new systems are put into place which creates transparency in federal government spending — for good.

A system that cannot easily be dismantled by a future president who might instead prefer and be expert at creating complex, impossible to untangle money laundering schemes for example. 

Based upon the USAID spending, which has been revealed to be largely used to buy media and fund Non-Government Organizations with politically powerful sponsors and board’s, it is obvious why unraveling the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered is under legal attack by the left in an attempt to thwart federal government spending transparency.

After the political weaponization of government by the Obama and then Biden administrations, concerns about politically appointed government employees (and all DOGE employees are government employees) accessing personal data are valid. It would have been nice if they showed the same concern when just removed USAID head Samantha Power, when she was UN Ambassador in Jan. 2017, unmasked hundreds of her political foes in the waning days of the Obama administration. Or if they had stepped up and joined Republicans in decrying the IRS and other government agency attacks on people involved in the tea party movement.  Or if they had spoken up when Marco Rubio had his tax records leaked from the Tampa IRS office or President Trump had the same done to him.

But they didn’t, so spare me your fake concern about abuse of power, the left’s real concern is that the entire spider web of left-wing political funding using taxpayer dollars is being unraveled. 

To be clear DOGE is examining systems and finding loopholes, not picking figures and funders of the far-left for a forensic colonoscopy. They are looking for anomalies or connections which indicate fraud, and suggesting ways to close those loopholes to make the system work better.

This doesn’t mean that, as a result of this granular review that massive fraud rings won’t be uncovered, prosecuted with some of the stolen money recovered and the thieves thrown behind bars. It means that there are systems in place to pull the threads on the great Treasury robbery and identify the thieves and throw them in prison. What has been missing are effective ways to identify where the money is going, and ensure that it is not being stolen.

Three weeks into the Trump administration, it is not a far stretch to guess that stopping the wholesale raiding of the federal treasury will be one of his top three accomplishments, and who knows, it might even give us a way out of the national debt sword that hangs over all of our collective necks.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2025/02/11/doge-uncovers-50b-annually-sent-to-people-without-ssnswhy-didnt-congress-reveal-this-n2652010

Cartoon: Balls To The Wall

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/cartoon-balls-to-the-wall/

Watch Word Of The Day: Look For It And Stamp It Out

By Bill Wilson

Many Americans have come to understand that the mainstream, corporate media is a controlled propaganda machine. There are no original ideas and no deviation allowed from the mandated set of words to describe any action or situation. For way too long, even the slugs in corporate media have essentially admitted this obvious fact because it was simply unavoidable — too apparent to deny.

Starting last week, I thought I had seen the new “watch word” — the slogan or phrase that the controlled media would use in an attempt to undermine the Trump Administration’s efforts to rein in the out-of-control federal government. And, then in the Washington Post (a.k.a. CIA newsletter) it smacked me right in the face. The new term to define the Trump administration is “illegal.”

I counted the use of the term twelve times in a single recent edition. That includes a rather timid use by Perry Bacon, Jr. who asserted actions were “potentially illegal.” And what do these enemies of the people use to justify the use of such an inflammatory and reckless term? The rulings by a handful of radical, leftist judges who are sure to be overturned.

But for the sake of argument, let’s dissect this intended slur and see it for what it is.

First, given the insanity of rules, measures and laws put forth over the past 50 years, it is logical to believe that any action of any kind by any person or official is somewhere “illegal.” We have been tied down by a mountain of contradictory and highly questionable restraints that have hindered any effort to clean up the incredible mess that is Washington, D.C. 

Like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians, there is really only one way to be free of the situation — stand up, tear off the useless and unreasonable restraints and begin the word at hand. That to a degree is what DOGE has been doing, simply moving forward to do the job of exposing the corruption and decay in the system.

But doesn’t this confirm the hectoring of the cringing elites?

No, not in the least. And the reason it doesn’t is the second observation that must be factored into the scenario.

For decades — perhaps as far back as under the disastrous Woodrow Wilson — Congress has long abandoned its role as envisioned by the Constitution. They have shirked their responsibilities, handed power to the Executive or so-called “independent agencies.” Look at one of the more crucial roles Congress is supposed to play in our system, the declaration of war. But when was the last time Congress did that? World War II in 1942. Ever since, they have simply handed that ominous power to the executive.

That is what we are seeing now. The Constitution empowers the President to direct and be responsible for the Executive offices of the government. Congress routinely sluffs off its duty and says, “go ahead and you do it.” And the façade of the “independent agencies” is simply nonsense. There are no “independent agencies,” there are no arms of the government that are not responsible to either Congress or the Executive. To believe otherwise is to fall into the black-hole of the Harvard faculty lounge where the noted Native American Elizabeth Warren has come up with dozens of fantasies to circumvent the Constitution.

To sum it up, there is no there, there.

And finally, what is the intent of this? The powers-that-be clearly are hoping that their media blitz will tarnish the efforts of the administration. But do they really believe for one second that it will back President Donald Trump and DOGE off? The Trump team has had everything under the sun thrown at them, including bullets. Why do the denizens of corporate media think their nasty words will somehow change anything? Spoiler alert: it changes nothing. It is just another signal that they and their gaggle of henpeckers are impotent.

One final thought. After a combined twelve years of the Obama-Biden regime, how can these people look in the mirror and contend that actions by the executive are “illegal.” From Crossfire Hurricane to Fast and Furious, that blemish on American history acted with impunity and disregard for the law or accepted convention. If now they reap the whirlwind of their own making most Americans will give a collective shrug and move on.

Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/watch-word-of-the-day-look-for-it-and-stamp-it-out/