Musk Says Treasury, Doge Instituting Reporting Changes To All Government Payments

Elon Musk said on Saturday that the Treasury Department and his Department of Government Efficiency have reached an agreement changing reporting requirements for “all outgoing government payments.”
The government payments will now have a “payment categorization code” for auditing purposes, he wrote in a post on X, the social media site he owns.
Musk also said payments must provide a rationale in a comment field, adding they are “not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale” but that all payments must have one. Musk added that the do-not-pay list of people or companies that shouldn't receive government money should be updated “at least weekly, if not daily.”
“The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE,” Musk wrote. “It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!”
It is not immediately clear how dramatically the new requirements would change the government payment process. The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He also asserted that staffers at the Treasury said there was about $50 billion of “unequivocal and obvious fraud” in entitlement payments, but didn’t provide further evidence.
The changes come as Musk’s DOGE has increasingly embedded itself within the Treasury Department and attempted to gain access to sensitive Treasury records. A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked DOGE — including Musk — from accessing these records pending legal proceedings.