Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the co-chair of the congressional Department of Government Efficiency Caucus, wants to push ahead on efforts to comb through government spending to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
“DOGE is an active component in the government. They meet on a regular basis. They are made up of professionals who have a mission,” he said Tuesday during a Politico event in response to a question about who is leading the effort. He added that he last spoke with Musk in March or April.
The lawmaker called data siloes a “key question that we have to answer,” saying that “too many times, we’ve got almost a Rube Goldberg effect of trying to figure out where you get data and how you do that.”
Data and artificial intelligence can help verify people receiving benefits, including those already on the rolls, said Sessions.
“We still estimate we have a large number of people who are receiving benefits, despite what DOGE has done today,” he said, referencing “people that do not exist” and “those people who were receiving benefits are dead and gone.”
Lambert here: Thanks, Elon.
Identity theft is indeed a threat vector bad actors use to try to siphon off government money, and better data sharing and identity verification are tools that anti-fraud experts say could help the government make sure that the right people are getting benefits.
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