For decades, the US government has had a field day with uncontrolled spending without any regulatory agency visibly monitoring it — on protracted wars and occupation, military and economic aid to allies, especially Ukraine, research and production of new super weapons, cyber wars against China and Russia, to name a few. For decades, all the US government spending was largely invisible to the public, and media failed miserably to report this.

As the saying goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more invisible the spending, the more it will balloon to the high heavens. This uncontrolled invisible government spending is just beginning to be unearthed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) under Elon Musk, Trump’s new economic warrior.

Recently, DoGE exposed a serious scandal — the absence of a tracking code, which the Treasury Department failed to implement, making it “almost impossible” to trace a staggering $4.7 trillion in federal payments (source: Newsweek, 18 Feb. 2025).

This is not a simple inefficiency or oversight problem. It is a malicious effort to hide expenses and keep it away from DoGE, a crime both in the moral and legal realms. It is a grave defiance to hide the truth. So far, no names of culprits have emerged, perhaps due to the still ongoing investigation, before Musk reports the names to the public and runs after the culprits.

The Treasury Department affair is perhaps the tip of the iceberg. If it can hide such massive spending, what about the other agencies on a similar scale, using more ingenious and creative ways. How much money in the trillions is being embezzled in this manner?

Until the birth of DoGE, there was no such viable and visible mechanism to monitor government spending. The US government bureaucracy, all sectors, had a field day because high spending was part of the “culture” — understood by everyone at all levels of the bureaucracy, and there was little or no opposition. When uncontrolled spending becomes part of the culture, it is virtually irreversible, until DoGE, that is.

For the first time, America is waking up to the evils of runaway, almost invisible, spending, after so many decades. The estimate may reach about 50 to 65 percent of total spending, which is considered a total waste of the hard-earned tax money of the public, taking into account that this runaway phenomenon has been going on for the last two to three decades. No wonder the US government had always been in deficit spending in the trillions.

Trimming bureaucratic fat is virtually impossible for all countries. The trend is for budgets to soar to the high heavens through time. DoGE is a pioneering movement. If America can trim irreversible bureaucratic fat, other nations perhaps can do it. It is a matter of political will. DoGE will become a global movement, a global model for good governance.

DoGE is facing an emerging storm of resistance. Already, greedy bureaucrats believe they have a right to runaway spending and are using the courts, federal and state, to pursue their objectives. They actually believe they have a right to overspend, but they do not call it that. They have “enculturated” greed and overspending.

DoGE is a promising pioneering model of good governance, but we are not yet sure who will win. Some observers believe DoGE can only work in an environment of dictatorship and control, which the American public will surely resist. Then, perhaps a new civil war is emerging, the likes of which we had never seen before.