Millions of unused software licenses, credit cards issued at twice the rate of federal employees, and payments to dead Social Security recipients are just some of the “stunning” waste just uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb.
The revelations come as Sens. Ricketts and Jacky Rosen, D-N.V., introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday requiring all new federal budgets to detail improper payments by federal agencies.
“When federal agencies waste money, it means less money for essential services, national defense or deficit reduction,” Ricketts, a member of the Senate DOGE Caucus.
“Transparency brings accountability. My bipartisan bill will highlight where money is being misspent so we can combat waste and save taxpayer dollars.”
Ricketts described “stunning” findings from DOGE’s investigations under the leadership of billionaire Elon Musk to Fox News.
He cited one government agency purchasing 37,000 software licenses despite employing only 13,000 people.
“Many of the licenses had never been used,” Ricketts said.
The findings extend to federal credit cards. “We got 2.4 million federal employees. We have 4.6 million credit cards out there. That just leads to opportunities for fraud,” Ricketts explained.
“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.”
The senator described a pattern of bureaucratic failures causing taxpayer money to disappear into a system without accountability. “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,” Ricketts said.
“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.”
The Government Accountability Office reports improper federal payments have totaled approximately $2.8 trillion since 2003, including $236 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 and $161.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2024.
Ricketts has consistently defended DOGE’s review of government spending, including its access to Treasury Department systems. Democrats have demanded that Musk’s team stop it’s fiscal accountability efforts.
“They have no access to the private financial data of anybody and I’ll also point out that Elon Musk is now a government employee working out of the White House,” Ricketts said in a recent press conference. “So they are looking for that wasteful spending and being able to see how the money is being spent is the first step to collecting the data so they can make sure we’re ‘right-sizing’ government to provide the services we need to provide, but not doing it in a way that is going to be wasteful, fraudulent, or anything like that.”
Both Ricketts and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., have emphasized that DOGE has “read-only” access to these systems.
In recent weeks, DOGE’s influence has expanded rapidly as they’ve uncovered shocking federal waste. The department recently reviewed all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending, leading to a near-total shutdown of the agency.
“We’ve been paying for things like transgender operas in Columbia, transgender comic books in Peru, or drag shows in Ecuador–those are clearly things that the American people are really not expecting us to pay for and $77 million was also spent by the State Department on DEI initiatives,” he said.
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.… pic.twitter.com/NdWaIRf5Nk
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 1, 2025