When tech billionaire Elon Musk worked with President Donald Trump to set up the Department of Government Efficiency task force, he and the software engineers he put to work within agencies across the federal government were convinced they would find huge fraud and inefficiencies to untangle.
But one person who worked inside DOGE is admitting in a new NPR interview that they barely found anything, and the federal government actually runs far more efficiently than they had ever expected.
"Blockbuster NPR reporting from a DOGE whistleblower," wrote Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collective in a sarcastic reaction to the interview. "Big reveal: Actually government is kinda sorta efficient. And the fraud? Actually there are kinda a lotta checks on that already too. Great work everyone!"
One of the key turning points for Sahil Lavingia was when Musk tasked him with investigating an alleged disability payment to someone who was 137, which Musk has repeatedly claimed with no evidence is a rampant type of fraud. However, he told NPR's Leila Fadel, after he got a VA employee to look into it, "He comes back to us and says, hey, you know, this guy's — in our database, he's 75." The issue was simply that two computers disagreed with each other.
The more Lavingia looked, the more he found that the only problems in the government he could see were minor glitches like this, not widespread fraud.
"I mean, I really believe that, like, we hoped there would be more fraud, that, like — I think we underrated how many checks there exist when you pay somebody," Lavingia said. "I think, actually, there is a check somewhere in the system. And that check proves — you know, makes sure that they're alive, makes sure that they're — you know, they've gone to a doctor's appointment in the last three months."
Musk, who recently left his official role as a White House adviser, entered an aggressive feud with Trump as the two fell out over the GOP's "big, beautiful bill" on tax cuts, which Musk claims is unacceptable for its impact on the federal deficit.
