Rick Manning writes for Townhall.com about a disturbing revelation from the Trump administration’s new government efficiency unit.

$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.