NEW: Sen. Pete Ricketts says Elon Musk and DOGE found "stunning" waste like 37,000 software licenses for a government agency with 13,000 employees.
"Many of the licenses had never been used."
"We got 2.4 million federal employees. We have 4.6 million credit cards out there. That just leads to opportunities for fraud."
"He said there are 22 million people in our Social Security system that are clearly dead. These are the kinds of things that open it up to fraud."
"Subscriptions that aren't being used."
"You have a contract officer who retired but didn't turn off the faucet. The money was still going out. Most companies getting federal dollars probably don't say anything."
"Even if they wanted to say, 'Hey, we're not supposed to get this money anymore,' you'd have almost no way to find out who to contact to get the money shut off and make sure taxpayer dollars weren't being wasted."
NEW: Sen. Pete Ricketts says Elon Musk and DOGE found "stunning" waste like 37,000 software licenses for a government agency with 13,000 employees.
"Many of the licenses had never been used."
"We got 2.4 million federal employees. We have 4.6 million credit cards out there. That just leads to opportunities for fraud."
"He said there are 22 million people in our Social Security system that are clearly dead. These are the kinds of things that open it up to fraud."
"Subscriptions that aren't being used."
"You have a contract officer who retired but didn't turn off the faucet. The money was still going out. Most companies getting federal dollars probably don't say anything."
"Even if they wanted to say, 'Hey, we're not supposed to get this money anymore,' you'd have almost no way to find out who to contact to get the money shut off and make sure taxpayer dollars weren't being wasted."
