Following President Donald Trump’s austerity policies and goal of cutting $1 trillion in annual federal spending, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered another staggering find of fraud and waste over the weekend.
In a bombshell revelation, DOGE announced that the Small Business Administration (SBA) somehow approved nearly 5,600 loans totaling $312 million to “business owners” who were 11 years old or younger during the COVID-19 pandemic — potentially the biggest waste identified to date.
Elementary school children were given millions in taxpayer dollars for fake businesses by the federal government.
“While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name,” DOGE announced in a Saturday night post on X. The agency added that they’re “working together with @SBAgov to solve this problem this week.”
This discovery is part of a growing pattern of rampant fraud in government pandemic relief programs that occurred under the previous administration. Just days earlier, DOGE revealed another shocking discovery: the SBA had issued 3,095 loans worth $333 million to borrowers listed as over 115 years old. In one particularly egregious case, a supposed 157-year-old individual received $36,000 in federal loans.
Trump recently highlighted this fraud in his recent address to Congress, where he noted the Social Security Administration’s databases include millions of impossibly old beneficiaries.
“3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149,” Trump said. “And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.”
The oldest verified human in history lived to 122 years old. Yet somehow, the U.S. government has been issuing millions in payments to people supposedly decades older.
The questionable loans were distributed through both the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) programs during 2020 and 2021. These programs were designed to help legitimate small businesses weather the pandemic but instead became vehicles for staggering amounts of financial fraud.
Meanwhile, as DOGE continues to expose these abuses, the agency is simultaneously terminating wasteful contracts.
In its latest announcement, DOGE reported canceling 162 nonessential contracts with a total ceiling value of $205 million, generating immediate savings of $90 million for taxpayers. One particularly ironic termination: a $10.3 million Department of Agriculture contract for “identifying unnecessary contracts.”
Congressional Democrats are howling in protest with each new DOGE cut, but polling shows that the American people are broadly supportive of the financial austerity measures.
In a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, Musk expressed confidence that DOGE could identify and eliminate up to $1 trillion in government waste.
“The executive DOGE team is confident, they think they can get $1 trillion,” one lawmaker told Fox News. “Now, we’ll see, right? And the thing is, he acknowledged that we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re going to correct them very quickly.”
Since Trump has taken office, Wall Street and the media have fretted over tariffs and “globalist” interests to push narratives of economic doom.
But there’s barely any mention of the long-term benefits of finally addressing the corruption and waste that has plagued our government for decades. The DOGE is unleashed, and Americans deserve to know where their tax dollars have really been going.