The Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has managed to accomplish a phenomenal feat within the Beltway media: It is triggering more Democrats and more corporate media propagandists than Donald Trump himself.
Most notably, DOGE has sent Democrats into fits of apoplexy when it was learned that DOGE had been given “read only” access to the payments system for the US Treasury.
Predictably, Democrats in Congress went into full meltdown mode, even staging a protest on the steps of the U.S. Treasury building.
Yet lost in all the media hyperventilation and hyperbole has been the actual facts of what the DOGE team has been granted, what it is doing with that access, and what has been disclosed thus far. The narratives once again have taken on a life of their own, irrespective of the facts.
Corporate media largely follows the Democrats’ theme of DOGE as a stealthy power grab by Elon Musk. Social and alternative media outlets are presenting DOGE as President Trump’s effort to finally drain the DC Swamp of rampant fraud and corruption.
These are narratives, and that’s all they are. Where they touch on actual facts they are supportable and even thought-provoking. Where they decouple from actual facts they are simply delusional.
Alas, facts are dry. Facts are often dull. Facts ultimately need a narrative in order to be presented coherently. Yet it is the facts—and only the facts—which make a narrative relevant and illuminating.
This becomes readily apparent when we take a closer look at DOGE and the access it gained to federal payment systems.
Where We Begin: DOGE Accesses US Treasury Payment System
Our point of departure is the initial reporting last weekend that Elon Musk was being allowed to access the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems.
The Associated Press chose to focus on the sensitivity of payment information involved:
The move by DOGE, a Trump administration task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, means it could have wide leeway to access important taxpayer data, among other things.
Granting the DOGE team access to the federal payments system capped a small contretemps last week which saw a career Treasury staffer, David Lebryk, placed on administrative leave after rebuffing DOGE requests for access.
David Lebryk, a career civil servant who oversaw the more than one billion payments that the federal government makes every year, was placed on administrative leave this week after resisting requests from Mr. Musk’s lieutenants, according to people familiar with the circumstances, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal dynamics.
What the DOGE team, led by Tom Krause, CEO of Cloud Software Group, sought and ultimately was allowed to access is the systems of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
What is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service?
The Bureau is that portion of the Treasury Department which manages all the infrastructure necessary for processing financial transactions with the U.S. Treasury:
Some commentators have described the Bureau as “the government’s checkbook”.
When you make a payment to the U.S. Treasury (e.g., when you pay your taxes), or when you receive a payment from the U.S. Treasury (e.g., if you are receiving Social Security payments), the mechanics of that transaction are handled by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
This is the infrastructure Elon Musk and DOGE wished to access last week, and to which they were ultimately allowed to access over the weekend.
Corporate Media Misrepresents DOGE Level Of Access
From the start, corporate media has exaggerated the ramifications of DOGE’s access.
The Associated Press, in its initial reporting, highlighted an allegation by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon that Musk intended to use the access to disrupt vital payments to vulnerable people.
The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon, on Friday sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concern that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.”
“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” Wyden said.
Lost in the media hype, however, was any actual substantiation of that claim, or that the DOGE team had any intention other than what very likely amounts to a forensic audit.
Indeed, the allegation was flatly rejected in a Treasury Department letter to members of Congress, in which it was stated that DOGE team member Tom Krause would have “read-only” access to Treasury payment systems.
What was not included in media coverage of that letter, however, was that the Treasury Department was taking full ownership of Krause’ access, and that Krause was working in coordination with Treasury staff.
Mr. Krause is conducting this effort in coordination with veteran career Treasury officials, and all operational processes continue to be conducted only by career Treasury staff in accordance with all standard security, safety, and privacy standards.
The Treasury Department also made a commitment that Krause’ access to the payment systems would not interfere with timely payment processing.
Importantly, the ongoing review of Treasury’s systems is not resulting in the suspension or rejection of any payment instructions submitted to Treasury by other federal agencies across the government. In particular, the review at the Fiscal Service has not caused payments for obligations such as Social Security and Medicare to be delayed or re-routed. To be clear, the agency responsible for making the payment always drives the payment process.
Unsurprisingly, several Democrats in Congress are loathe to accept the assurances of the Treasury Department.
“Some Republicans are trying to suggest that Musk only has ‘viewing access’ to Treasury’s highly sensitive payment system as if that’s acceptable either,” said Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a statement.
“But why on earth should we believe that — particularly when he is saying the exact opposite loudly and repeatedly for everyone to see?”
For instance, Musk has tweeted on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that DOGE has shut down payments to a Lutheran charity. “The corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time,” Musk said on X, adding that DOGE is “rapidly shutting down” payments to the charity.
Senator Murray’s concern apparently arrises from a tweet Musk posted on his social media platform X regarding payments to a Lutheran charity.
What Senator Murray and the Associated Press conveniently omitted is that Musk was responding to a tweet by General Mike Flynn alleging several improper payments to the charity and its affiliates.
While it is fair to ask of DOGE and Elon Musk what was meant by “the DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments”, it is disingenuous in the extreme to imply, as Senator Murray did, that Musk is proposing to arbitrarily and improperly disrupt legitimate payments. Indeed, given DOGE’s reason for existence, if there is evidence that payments are in some fashion improper Elon Musk is obligated to take steps to cancel or suspend those payments.
DOGE Questions Treasury Internal Controls
The allegations made regarding Lutheran Family Services highlight why the DOGE team would want access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and why it is arguably appropriate and even necessary that they have that access.
The allegations made by General Flynn resonate with another of Elon Musk’s tweets regarding the payment systems:
We must be clear on the nature of Musk’s tweet: it is a claim of fact. It is not a statement of fact, and we should not perceive it as such.
Musk’s tweet in and of itself it proves nothing. We do not have within Musk’s tweet any audit working papers or report detailing what investigations were made into the work of Treasury payment approval officers.
What the claim does is raise important questions about the Office of Payment Integrity within the BFS, and how well it is fulfilling its function.
Understand that the mission of the Office is to verify that payments are appropriate and legitimate.
Treasury’s Office of Payment Integrity (OPI) provides government-wide solutions to prevent fraud and enhance payment integrity in federally funded programs. With deep knowledge in data-sharing best practices, OPI helps clients make data-driven decisions with confidence.
That the personnel within such an entity would never have had reason to disallow a payment even temporarily is not only remarkable but also implausible. With over a billion transactions handled every year, it beggars belief that every transaction was properly documented and reviewed.
Politico took pains to point out that payment integrity efforts have resulted in some success.
The Bureau of Fiscal Service, which operates Treasury’s payment system, has a payments integrity office tasked with identifying, preventing and recovering fraud and improper payments. According to Treasury, those efforts have prevented improper payments totaling nearly $155 million and have aided in the recovery of nearly $350 million.
Unfortunately for Politico’s own reporting, a few paragraphs farther down they detail how badly the Office of Payment Integrity has fallen short.
Yet improper payments in federal programs have been a perennial problem that has long drawn the concern of government watchdogs and congressional lawmakers. Improper payments across the government spiked in recent years when Congress approved massive new relief programs to help Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Government Accountability Office estimated last year that the federal government could be losing between $233 billion and $521 billion each year due to fraud.
In the GAO report referenced by Politico was an explicit call for improvements to the Office of Payment Integrity, and reiterates that the government loses hundreds of billions each year not just to fraud but also to improper payments:
An improper payment is any payment that should not have been made or that was made in an incorrect amount (including overpayments and underpayments) under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements. Examples of improper payments include payments to an ineligible recipient, payments for an ineligible good or service, and duplicate payments. Agencies’ improper payment reporting also treats any payment that cannot be determined to be proper due to lacking or insufficient documentation as improper.
It is worth noting that the problem became significantly worse during the (Biden-)Harris Administration.
With $2.7Trillion in improper payments since 2003, the work of the Office of Payment Integrity would seem to demand close scrutiny.
The magnitude of the improper payment issue arguably is proof positive that the Federal government’s internal controls—which would include the functions of the OPI—are deficient to say the very least.
There is perverse irony in this, because the Code Of Federal Regulations1 demands that Federal award recipients establish sound internal controls to prevent misuse and misappropriation of funds:
§ 200.303 Internal controls.
The recipient and subrecipient must:
(a) Establish, document, and maintain effective internal control over the Federal award that provides reasonable assurance that the recipient or subrecipient is managing the Federal award in compliance with Federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Federal award. These internal controls should align with the guidance in “Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government” issued by the Comptroller General of the United States or the “Internal Control-Integrated Framework” issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO).
(b) Comply with the U.S. Constitution, Federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Federal award.
(c) Evaluate and monitor the recipient's or subrecipient's compliance with statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of Federal awards.
(d) Take prompt action when instances of noncompliance are identified.
(e) Take reasonable cybersecurity and other measures to safeguard information including protected personally identifiable information (PII) and other types of information. This also includes information the Federal agency or pass-through entity designates as sensitive or other information the recipient or subrecipient considers sensitive and is consistent with applicable Federal, State, local, and tribal laws regarding privacy and responsibility over confidentiality.
The Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs provides specific guidance for DoJ grant recipients regarding the development and maintenance of sound internal controls.
Nor are internal controls an obscure aspect of financial and fiscal management. Indeed, the major accounting firms have long recognized that internal controls are an area where public sector accounting and private sector accounting overlap, and especially so since the advent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Internal controls are also a topic of much study even internationally.
Despite the unequivocal centrality of effective internal controls to good accounting and good fiscal management, even the GAO has reported that the Office of Payment Integrity is deficient as an internal control mechanism. The clear conclusion of the GAO’s assessment of the OPI is that it is not discharging its internal control function properly or even competently.
That does not prove Musk’s claims about the Treasury’s payment approval officers, but it undeniably lends credibility to them. Musk’s tweet is a succinct statement of what a breakdown in internal controls might look like, when the GAO has already told the world the Treasury’s internal controls have broken down.
Even if one sets aside the directive within the Executive Order establishing DOGE for all government agencies to give DOGE teams “full and prompt access” to all agency systems, the GAO made the case for DOGE to take a look at the Office of Payment Integrity specifically and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service more broadly before Donald Trump even won the November election.
Does this mean that every action which has been or will be taken by DOGE is wholly appropriate and legitimate? Absolutely not. DOGE can make mistakes and might even prove to be itself somewhat corrupt. Human beings are generally not saints, and we would be foolish to presume they are.
We should remember also that DOGE is mandated by the Executive Order to maintain “rigorous data protection standards”, and any breach of such standards would almost certainly be actionable, as the Code of Federal Regulations2 mandates protection of privacy and conformance to freedom of information laws. Should DOGE violate those regulations or any other pertinent regulation or legislation, appropriate sanctions should be levied.
However, while DOGE may prove to be something less than the acme of government reform, even the GAO has already proven that DOGE or an initiative very much like it is absolutely necessary if the glaring deficiencies within the government are to be remedied. DOGE may not be popular in some circles, but the case has already been made that it is necessary.
And Then There’s USAID
No discussion of internal controls would be complete without some mention of the evolving scandal of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which Elon Musk and Donald Trump determined should be shut down at the beginning of the week.
In an audio message on X he said: "We're shutting it down" adding that he had the "full support of the president".
He said that the agency is "beyond repair."
Spending for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is determined by Congress. Its budget for the 2023 fiscal year was about $40bn, according to a report last month from the Congressional Research Service. It works primarily to support foreign aid and overseas charities.
As the title of PJ Media’s reporting on this now-shuttered US aid agency makes clear, there are quite a few alt-media outlets who view USAID as the acme of government corruption and proof that “The Deep State” is real.
Even without that extraordinary charge, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back hard against charges by Democrats that shuttering the agency was creating a geopolitical opening for US adversaries such as China to exploit:
“I would just say a strong message to Democrats who are out there pretending to be outraged about the long list of crap that this administration is cutting,” Leavitt told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing, naming examples from her list of programs Trump has deemed wasteful. “Democrats are outraged that the American people … want their taxpayers going to good uses, not stuff like this.”
The Washington Examiner’s reporting went on to detail 28 separate items within Leavitt’s “long list of crap”.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio added fuel to the fire when he accused the staff at USAID of “rank insubordination”.
Rubio blasted USAID for being "completely unresponsive" telling Fox "they don’t consider that they work for the U.S., they just think they’re a global entity and that their master is the globe and not the United States, and that’s not what the statute says, and that’s not sustainable."
Corporate media, of course, did not miss the opportunity to frame the unfolding scandal as one of President Trump and his Administration shuttering a vital and relevant foreign aid resource.
Senator Marco Rubio, now serving as both Secretary of State and Acting Administrator of USAID, has initiated a widespread review of U.S. foreign aid, halting nearly all outgoing funding and effectively sidelining much of USAID’s workforce. While some waivers have since been issued, the lack of clarity surrounding their implementation has left critical programs in limbo. Rubio frames his review around three fundamental questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?
These are not just fair questions—they are the right ones. Any responsible government should evaluate its foreign aid spending through this lens. But the answers are already evident: U.S. foreign aid, when executed properly, does all three, and has done for decades.
The key words here are “when executed properly.”
Even Marco Rubio is willing to defend the principle of foreign aid that serves America’s interests. The “truth” about which corporate media presumes to lecture Rubio is not even a point of contention where he is concerned.
Rather, the point of contention is whether or not specific funding initiatives by USAID make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
Per the reporting by PJ Media, USAID has been sending payments to the Taliban—does that make America safer in the aftermath of Afghanistan?
As detailed by Karoline Leavitt and reported by the Washington Examiner, USAID paid $1.1 to an Armenian LGBTQ group—did that make America stronger?
Similarly, how does spending $6 million to “Transform Digital Spaces to Reflect Feminist Democratic Principles” make America more prosperous?
Most importantly, how does an agency come to have a brief which is so broad, so far-reaching, that it has managed to persuade itself that it is somehow beyond the purview of the Oval Office?
If the Treasury’s OPI represents a case of deficient internal controls, USAID represents a case of the complete absence of internal controls.
Particularly problematic is the payment of $4.7 million to EcoHealth Alliance, the controversial and almost-certainly corrupt conduit of US taxpayer dollars to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (“ground zero” for the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which led to the COVID Pandemic Panic).
Yet the most controversial payments by USAID have without a doubt been to media outlets around the world.
Notionally, USAID seeks to promote effective independent journalism globally, including in countries where press freedom is not a given, and international journalism advocacy groups like Reporters Without Borders have been quick to defend USAID funding of non-state media and independent journalism.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) revealed that USAID funded 6,200 journalists, 707 non-state media outlets, and 279 media-focused NGOs in more than 30 countries in 2023.
The 2025 US foreign aid budget allocated $268.4 million to support “independent media and the free flow of information,” the organization reported citing a now-removed fact sheet.
However, buried within those efforts are also payments to major media outlets such as Politico, with USAID essentially subsidizing government workers’ subscriptions to the media outlets “Pro” platform, according to Karoline Leavitt.
At a White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that she had been made aware of USAID funding to media outlets, including Politico, adding that taxpayer dollars that had been used for "essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico."
Of course, corporate media rather artlessly juxtaposed Karoline Leavitt’s statements on payments to Politico with an investigative journalist’s “fun fact” about them.
Investigative journalist Byron Tau disputed the claim that Politico was receiving USAID funding, writing on X, formerly Twitter: "I looked at these contracts and I have my own fun fact... This is occurring because agencies (not just USAID) are buying subscriptions to Politico's Pro editorial product, not because Politico is getting grants or other federal funding."
Given that these subscriptions are for government workers in government agencies, and given that Politico’s journalistic vision of itself focuses on politics and power—i.e., on government—the mere existence of these payments raises questions of conflict of interest.
Indeed, veteran journalists might recall the “Rosenthal Rule” of an earlier era, named for the New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal’s earthy but relevant articulation of the boundaries that should exist between journalists and those whom they covered.
He once told a reporter who demanded to exercise his rights by marching in a street demonstration he was assigned to cover: “OK, the rule is, you can [make love to] an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can’t cover the circus.” We call that “the Rosenthal rule.” I’ve invoked it at this newspaper, too.
A government agency paying a media outlet which focuses on government topics for subscriptions arguably falls well outside the parameters of the Rosenthal Rule.
As even corporate media tacitly concedes, improper and corrupt foreign aid is still improper and corrupt. It is still foreign aid that is not “executed properly.”
What Should Be The Narrative For These Facts?
The structural flaw in all of the foregoing corporate media narratives is that they implicitly presume DOGE to be corrupt and malignant and the government agencies DOGE is auditing to be virtuous and benevolent.
Alternative media makes the same mistake in the opposite direction, presenting DOGE as virtuous and benevolent while the government agencies are corrupt and malignant.
Where there are facts to ground these narratives, they hold up. Where the facts run counter to these narratives, they do not hold up.
DOGE answering the GAO’s own call for someone to address deficiencies within the Office of Payment Integrity can hardly be taken as evidence that DOGE is corrupt. Hundreds of billions in improper payments each year does not bolster any inference the Treasury or its Office of Payment Integrity is virtuous and benevolent. Indeed, the facts presented by the GAO last fall by themselves make a strong case that DOGE looking into how the Treasury’s payment systems are run is long overdue.
The existence of worthy funding initiatives by USAID does not cancel the existence of corrupt payments by USAID, and certainly does not relieve USAID staffers of the need to conform to the chain of command within the State Department and the Trump Administration overall. Federal employees within the bureaucracy do not enjoy special privilege to second-guess or sabotage Presidential policies.
That is the real narrative here: no matter how many good deeds these agencies and programs might have to their credit, corrupt practices and illicit payments are intolerable in any representative democracy. Those in government do not get to trade so many good deeds for so many bad, and even an argument that an agency’s good deeds outweigh its bad acts necessarily requires an acknowledgement that there are bad deeds.
Democrats and Establishmentarians in Congress and in the media simply do not want to acknowledge there are bad acts, and so they demonize anyone who shines a spotlight on the bad acts.
Yet even before DOGE began upsetting bureaucratic applecarts, it has been clear for some time that corruption and incompetence are metastasizing cancers within government. In addition to the notorious exemplars such as the lawfare persecution of Donald Trump and the duplicity of the CDC regarding COVID, there have been lurking beneath the surface a growing number of bureaucratic insanities such as FEMA inexplicably running short of funds for Hurricane Helene victims at the same time the (Biden-)Harris Administration was sending tens of millions of dollars abroad for humanitarian aid in the far-flung reaches of the world.
Looking beyond the federal government, we have in the Los Angeles fires clear evidence that even state and local governments are failing to perform even basic functions.
Even before DOGE was ordered into existence by President Trump, we have witnessed time and again clear and incontrovertible evidence that government in the United States simply is not working as it should.
This is made abundantly clear when we consider that the corporate media narratives on DOGE in particular are undermined by one fact conspicuously not in evidence: No one is saying that DOGE is mistaken. As triggered as Democrats and Establishmentarians are by Elon Musk and DOGE, no one is willing to defend the particular examples of waste, fraud, and abuse being unearthed by Elon Musk and DOGE.
Those examples are the facts that deserve our attention. Those are the facts on which all media reporting needs to focus. Those are the facts which highlight problems within government in desperate need of a solution.
That narrative may not be as titillating or as triggering as the narratives currently enjoying popularity among corporate and alternative media, but is a narrative that is completely grounded in reality. It is a narrative that shows people where their attention is best directed. It is a narrative that invites people to analyze the facts for themselves and reach their own conclusions.
Facts are dry. Facts are often dull. Facts ultimately need a narrative in order to be presented coherently. Still, as the dustups over DOGE demonstrate, the facts are what matter most in any news reporting.
All facts matter, and the facts are all that matters. Narratives not so much.
Once again, Peter, you make so many valid points, and are so admirably grounded in facts. You are the poster boy for what human reasoning is capable of being. Thank you.
“Facts, schmacts! Trump is doing it and I hate Trump, so it’s a bad thing!” - every progressive for the next 4 years.