(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Trump steals everything by executive order [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-26
The power of the purse doesn't mean much when the purse has been stolen. That's what just happened yesterday.
Not satisfied with tanking the stock market, stealing all the Social Security money and making it easier for the rich to get richer, Trump decided to steal the entire income of the United States.
It's called the General Fund. Trump took it over today with his Executive Order called "Protecting America's Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse." It sounds like a good thing to do, doesn't it? But, that's not what it says.
The General Fund is America's checkbook.
The first very long paragraph basically says what the graphic above displays. The Treasury Department handles all this money. That Department is headed up by Secretary Scott Bessent. He loves cryptocurrencies.
Suddenly, according to the order, the Treasury Department lacks insufficient controls on the money going in and out. Now Trump wants all government agencies to provide more information before money is issued.
This power grab is justified by the General Accounting Office estimate that the government loses $233 to $521 billion a year to fraud. Somehow he thinks that centralizing all the payments to the Treasury Department will make things more accountable. He easily forgets Department's Inspectors General that keep track of invalid payments. That's why he fired all of them.
The Treasury Department also disperses funds to Non-Treasury Dispersing Offices that hand out the money themselves.
"This order promotes financial integrity by enabling the Treasury Department to more easily conduct improper payment and fraud prevention screening prior to dispersing funds on behalf of agencies."
"... prior to dispersing.." In other words, you don't get it at all. Whoever the non treasury dispersing office is, they have to jump through the hoops, and maybe they don't get all the money they need to disperse that they're required to do. What happens then?
"This order also promotes operational efficiency by returning dispersing functions to the Department of the Treasury when possible and consolidating and standardizing core Federal financial systems."
This is coming from a man who doesn't understand generally accepted accounting principles. You cannot trust this man. You can't trust his orders. I said months ago that the United States Treasury was going to become his piggy bank. Well, he not only stole it, he just broke it.
Section 3 makes it perfectly clear. Any disbursements by any agency that isn't the Treasury, has to get pre-certification before giving them out.
Trump quotes one section in 31 U.S.C. 3321 called "DO NOT PAY INITIATIVE." Little did any of us know this this existed. It's been there since 2019 in full form. The database being used for disbursements becomes under the control of the Office of Management and Budget. Right under Trump's thumb.
"The Director of The Office of Management and Budget measure guidance that establishes privacy and other requirements that will be incorporated into the Do Not Pay Initiative access agreements with States, including any contractor, subcontractor, or agent of a State, and the judicial and legislative branches of the United States."
It's that section at the end that says judicial and legislative branches that has me worried. Actually, it's all of it, but I just wonder what it means.
The actual text of the "Do Not Pay Initiative" is 31 U.S.C. 3354. There's a nice little section about using Social Security's Master Death Data database as well as others.
In Trump's executive order, though, it's called the "DO NOT PAY WORKING SYSTEM."
Section 3B says the Treasury determines what the pre-award and pre-certification requirements are, of course, to prevent fraud and improper payments
The whole thing reads like a massive official database to rule them all. All the states have to be part of it, all the federal government agencies have to be part of it as the only method for presenting fraud and improper payments. They're saying that individual agencies aren't doing that. So this gives them the power to do that. Why haven't we heard about this "Do Not Pay Working System" before? Has it never actually been implemented?
It appears to have a history back to 2009 when it was just executive order 13520 called "Reducing Improper Payments." It really got cooking in 2019, with Trump in office with the Payment integrity Information Act of 2019 (PDF). Here's a two page summary (PDF).
Executive Order Section 4 b) i): "If an obligation is incurred when funds are not available, then the Certifying Officer shall not certify payment."
So if an agency needs to be making a payment, like Social Security, but they're not given the money by the Treasury because they haven't proven the person exists or is entitled to it they should just say, sorry, no money.
Section 6. Reduction of NTDO's. This is the one I expected all along. Eliminating Non-Treasury Dispersing Offices. The Treasury gets their hands on the money, and they never let it go. He doesn't make any distinction for any agency who would be exempted from giving up their fund dispersing to the Treasury's Chief Dispursing Office. Even the Defense Dept. is included. There is one exception line for the "Supreme Court and other entities of the Federal Government outside the Executive Branch."
"Any remaining NTDO's are required to report daily to the Department of the Treasury's centralized accounting and reporting system in accordance with the current Department of Treasury guidance and applicable law."
"Daily reporting." One Treasury Department to rule them all. Maybe this is all computer to computer, but there is just something about the phrase that grates on one's nerves.
Section 6f: "The heads of agencies with dispersing authority delegated to the agency under 33 USC 3321b shall decommission all internal payment systems and use the Department of Treasury's disbursement systems, except and to the amount authorized by the Department of Treasury or otherwise required by applicable law."
Everybody gives up their authority and money to the Treasury Department.
In 2024, $33.9 trillion came into the Treasury, and $33.6 went out. I am not that bad at math, but that looks like a $300 billion surplus. So how do we get a $1.8 trillion deficit? It looks like it's all caused by the Federal debt borrowing, and repaying borrowing.
In 2024, there was an interest payment of $881 billion on the national debt. Will the Treasury just decide not to pay the debt and ruin the nation's credit rating again?
The Treasury is becoming more powerful than ever with more control over the nation's spending, taking away Congress's power even more than Trump has done with the Impoundment Act (which is being hotly contested). Add in Mike Lee and Thomas Massie's bill to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and Trump has complete control of $33.9 trillion. How many pants pockets can he fill?
There's still more. The U.S. currently holds $11 billion of gold certificates. This is with gold valued by statute at $42.22 an ounce. The market value of gold is $3,000 an ounce. So if you revalue the gold certificates at the market price you come up with $781 billion dollars. There are crazy people in our government that want to use that in order to buy Bitcoin.
On March 6th, Trump issued an executive order called: "Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile." Trump thinks he knows what he's doing with cryptocurrencies, but he doesn't. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent thinks he knows about cryptocurrencies, but he doesn't. When the value of anything is based on faith, it can be taken away as fast as it is given. All it takes is one rumor spread around the globe and the imagined value is gone. Here's an Investopedia article on the wild swings in Bitcoin value. Here's a look at the whole idea by a law firm that specializes in finance named Latham Watkins.
The idea of putting taxpayer dollars to use by investing them to get more out of them sounds like a good idea. The Federal Reserve does that in assets that are safe, like Treasury entities that are sound, tried and true. There are several ways the United States can manipulate the market with its vast resources. But, it can go either way, up or down. Now Republicans are seriously talking about abolishing the Federal Reserve, run by a Board of Directors that are not subject to political whims and turning all the U.S. resources over to the Department of Treasury which is controlled by a madman.
Add to that massive change in how money flows out of the Treasury by asking for verifiable proof of every single request. Many payments are mandated by law like Social Security. Many payments are what agencies need for their own operation, for employee salaries. Now, the Treasury is running the government by controlling all the money. DOGE is running the other half by controlling how much money and agency is entitled to have, that's if it is allowed to exist anymore. There's also the addition that the General Services Administration is taking over ALL government purchasing.
We always say that the way to understand Trump's reasoning is to follow the money. Well, he just added the biggest part of the battle plan to enrich himself and make all of us suffer. The financial executive orders seemed somewhat crazy on the surface, but put together, with the help of a subservient Congess, is a massive power grab for complete control of the finances of the United States by the Treasury.
Everyone's distracted by all the other power grabs, agencies shuttered, federal employees fired, putting the nation at risk with national security breaches that connecting these executive order dots isn't being made. I don't even know if this concentration of power into the Treasury is the last one. Controlling the General Fund is hard to beat, but I don't put anything past Trump and company now. There are some where Trump has to use Congress, like with abolishing the Federal Reserve, FDIC, CFPB, SEC, and the FTC.
Trump is pushing the envelope on the use of executive actions like no president has ever done before. This is truly one where we have to follow the money.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/26/2312547/-America-s-Checkbook-has-been-stolen-by-Trump?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
