BREAKING NEWS: DOGE has uncovered the largest money laundering scheme in US history
06:11 Share

Thanks to IP.

Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders.

You know what's smart? Enjoying a fresh gourmet meal at home that you didn't have to cook. Meet Factor, your loophole in the laws of mealtime. Chef-crafted meals delivered with a tap, ready in just two minutes. You know what's even smarter? Treating yourself without cheating your goals. Factor is dietician-approved, chef-prepared, and you-plated. Pretty smart, huh? Refresh your routine and eat smart with Factor. Learn more at factormeals.com.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla, X, the Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Madam Chair.

For far too long, D.C. politicians have gotten away with measuring their personal value and worth by how much of other people's money they give away. And for far too long, they self-righteously have opined that the spending was for altruistic purposes given out of care and compassion.

For far too long, they've been more concerned with looking like they cared than having enough care and concern to actually do the due diligence to ensure that the tax dollars were being used wisely and effectively. And for far too long, those of us who've worked to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse have had to deal with what amounts to an unconstitutional fourth branch of permanent bureaucracy—the

that has too often worked to ignore, obfuscate, delay, and frustrate our efforts to bring transparency and oversight. Over the last few weeks, the DOGE effort has begun to uncover not only how massive the waste, fraud, and abuse is, but also the extent at which D.C. politicians and too many obstinate bureaucrats have coordinated to create what is essentially the largest money laundering scheme in history. And while Americans have been working to make ends meet,

They have been using taxpayer dollars to fund unnecessary, egregious, and even evil things here at home and around the world. Thankfully, in Doge, we have a president bringing the leadership needed and a focused effort, along with the talent, technology, tools, and transparency to this waste, fraud, and abuse.

And to those who would stand opposed to this effort, I would just point out, while it's understandable to find waste, fraud and abuse that has grown and must has to size in this government, even over decades, certainly accelerated over the last few years to continue to protect it is corruption.

I want to thank the chair for beginning this war on waste on this side of Pennsylvania Avenue and bringing together this committee. This effort is so important as we work to relieve the Americans, people of this burden of waste, fraud and abuse. Mr. Talco, you mentioned in your written statement and talked about it in your statement at the beginning that

This waste, fraud and abuse is a national security threat. And certainly one of the challenges facing us that is a national security threat is our fiscal situation. And so we have got to find ways to find savings to the American people in order to

strengthen the bring confidence to the bond markets to put our country on a fiscal footing and to reverse the curse, so to speak, that we are placing on our children and our grandchildren. You mentioned a couple threats, though. You mentioned internal threats. You said that these cases involve government employees, individuals entrusted with administering benefits who, instead of using their positions to approve fraudulent claims, override security controls,

or even sell sensitive claimant information for profit. Now, this is not every federal employee for sure, but within the context of people who are trying to give their best effort, we have an internal threat. But you also mentioned transnational fraud rings, terrorist organizations, nations, nation states, North Korea, nuclear weapons programs funded by our tax dollars, China, Nigeria, Iran, Romania, Russia, not our friends necessarily that are being funded by taxpayer dollars. Could you give us some examples of how this is happening?

Yeah. So when you think about what happened during the pandemic, $1 trillion was stolen. 70% of that money went overseas. And I can give you some examples. In a Western state,

They had more people applying for unemployment insurance benefits and they had individuals over 18. The people that were stealing the money from Romania were using it to facilitate other fraud schemes that include fentanyl, that include doing things to impact our democracy.

On the insider threat, right, the first thing you have to say, and my dad was a public servant, is 99% of people that work in the public sector are honest, hardworking individuals. But there are some,

And what you need is data and technology to root that out. There were examples during the pandemic. There were some examples even of last week where people got into the Medicaid system in a southern, in a western state and stole $50 million in less than four months.

So you have to have these controls in place, right? These aren't individuals stealing, Mr. Cloud. These are organized criminal groups, both domestic and transnational. As you mentioned, taxpayers are being forced to fund the demise of our own country. Mr. Winston, I wanted to ask you because there's a lot of talk about reconciliation right now. You mentioned Medicaid and what could be done to bring a pretty substantial amount of savings. And this is without...

affecting those who truly need Medicaid and for what the purpose of the program was extended for. The gentleman's time has expired. The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift.

a new podcast from Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Etlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com slash stage zero.

And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.