Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the Government’s Responsibility Office, is located in Capitol Hill on Tuesday to present the report of its agency on government areas to improve and with a high risk of waste, fraud and abuse, a more traditional perspective on A hot issue in the era in the era of the Efficient Department of the Government of Elon Musk.
The updated report will quote $ 84 billion in savings in the last two years, since Congress and the Executive Branch followed hundreds of Gao recommendations on how more millions of millions could be saved.
Doge has been firing tweets on alleged savings, cutting the staff indiscriminately throughout the government and claiming inflated savings of $ 65 billion found in the last month, and Musk and their allies have been portraying the new effort as if no one in the Government looking for waste waste. or ways in which things can be done more efficiently.
But the GAO is the main guardian dog of the government, with a team of more than 3,000 auditors and governmental analysts that regularly pump reports aimed at making the government better and finding a real risk of fraud and abuse.
There have been some areas of general agreement between Musk’s Doge and the GAO.
Both Doge and GAO have publicly commented on the need to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system, reform the United States postal service, cancel contracts for empty federal office buildings and reduce inappropriate payments in Medicare and Medicaid , what Gao estimates that it costs more to the federal government than $ 150 billion last year.
But the Musk team has gone to those that Gao has been pointing out for years, so far the Musk team, including the reform of the National Flood Insurance Program, reviewing federal prisons, improving federal disability programs or reviewing how the NASA does its hiring. (Musk’s Spacex is an important NASA contractor).
Other Dux movements move against the alarms raised by the GAO.
For example, in addition to highlighting possible fraud areas, the GAO points out in this report, as it has done before, that the federal government is routinely leaving money on the table.
The Trump administration fired more than 3,000 IRS employees last week, but Gao points out that one of the key conclusions of the IRS this year was the difference in billions between the taxes owed and the really paid taxes. The IRS also says that it loses billions through identity theft.
The GAO says that the Department of the Interior could also increase its income for the United States Treasury collecting millions more in oil and gas leases.
Dodaro will also highlight a new area of concern: disaster relief.
The government’s response to disasters extends to 30 federal entities. In 2024 there were 27 disasters with at least one billion dollars in economic damage each. Dodaro will highlight how repeated disasters have tensed the Federal Emergency Management Agency and how federal agencies need to “provide assistance in the most efficient and effective way possible and reduce their fiscal exposure.”
An agency led by Doge, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, also plays an important role in disaster relief.
HUD is expected to face cuts of up to 50% of the current staff. The cuts of up to 84% are expected to hit HUD staff in the Community Planning and Development Office, which manages and distributes billions in disaster recovery funds to areas such as west of North Carolina affected For Hurricane Helene.
Gao has said that HUD needs to do more, no less, to supervise the funds that he gives to disasters, such as monitoring progress in disaster recovery and ensuring that the “needs of disaster survivors are satisfied in a timely manner.”
An HUD spokesman told NBC News: “Disaster recovery will not be affected.”
