The Claim

Signed executive orders to protect America’s bank account against waste, fraud, and abuse and modernize payments.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the president signed executive orders (plural) with two goals: (1) protecting against waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, and (2) modernizing the federal payment system. This refers to Executive Order 14249, “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” and Executive Order 14247, “Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account,” both signed March 25, 2025.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That signing these executive orders constitutes a “win” — that the problem of waste, fraud, and abuse is being addressed and that federal payments are being modernized. That this is novel and significant. That DOGE and the administration’s broader efficiency agenda are the drivers. That the executive orders have produced or will produce meaningful results in reducing the hundreds of billions lost to fraud and improper payments. That the administration is a responsible steward of taxpayer money.

What is conspicuously absent?

Seven critical omissions: (1) These executive orders build on a bipartisan legislative framework spanning two decades — the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002, the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010, the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 — making the claim of novelty misleading. (2) The administration’s own DOGE operation sought access to Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service payment systems in a manner that a federal judge described as “chaotic and haphazard,” resulting in court injunctions blocking access through May 2025. (3) A DOGE staffer was “mistakenly” given read/write access to the Secure Payment System — the system handling trillions in annual payments — raising precisely the security concerns the EOs purport to address. (4) The EOs conflate “fraud” ($233-$521B GAO estimate) with “improper payments” ($162B in FY2024), which are “related but different” according to GAO itself — most improper payments are documentation errors, not fraud. (5) The paper check elimination (September 30, 2025 deadline) disproportionately affects approximately 5 million unbanked households, with unbanked rates highest among American Indian/Alaska Native (12.2%), Black (10.6%), and Hispanic (9.5%) communities. (6) The administration simultaneously gutted the IRS workforce by 28% (from ~102,000 to ~74,000), undermining the very agency capacity needed to implement electronic payment transitions and verify taxpayer identities. (7) The broader DOGE “efficiency” agenda — which these EOs are part of — resulted in federal spending increasing by $301 billion in FY2025 and the deficit remaining essentially unchanged, while DOGE’s own verified savings were 1-3% of claimed figures (see items 219, 230, 231).

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

President Trump signed Executive Order 14247 and Executive Order 14249 on March 25, 2025. EO 14247, “Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account,” directs Treasury to cease issuing paper checks for all federal disbursements by September 30, 2025, transitioning to electronic funds transfer methods including direct deposit, prepaid cards, and digital wallets. EO 14249, “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” directs Treasury and OMB to establish pre-certification verification procedures for all federal payments and to centralize disbursing functions currently handled by Non-Treasury Disbursing Offices (which managed approximately $1.5 trillion, or 22% of federal disbursements, in FY2024). Both orders exist, were signed, and initiated implementation processes. ¹

The GAO estimates the federal government loses $233-$521 billion annually to fraud, and $162 billion in FY2024 to improper payments — but these are “related but different” categories. The fraud estimate (GAO-24-105833) uses Monte Carlo simulation on FY2018-2022 data and includes the COVID pandemic period, when fraud was historically anomalous. The improper payments estimate (GAO-25-107753) found $162 billion in FY2024, of which 84% were overpayments — driven primarily by documentation errors, eligibility determination failures, and administrative mistakes, not willful fraud. GAO’s own 2024 report (GAO-24-106608) explicitly states: “While all fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are due to fraud.” The two most common causes of improper payments are failure to determine beneficiary eligibility ($145.1 billion impact in FY2022) and information access restrictions preventing verification ($35.9 billion in FY2022). The EOs cite the upper end of the fraud range ($521 billion) while the actual interventions primarily target improper payments — a different and smaller problem set. ²

Reducing improper payments has been a bipartisan priority for over two decades, with major legislation under every administration since George W. Bush. The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (signed by Bush) first required agencies to estimate and report improper payments. The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 and the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012 (both signed by Obama) strengthened requirements. The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (bipartisan sponsors: Carper, Johnson, Peters, Braun) was signed into law on March 2, 2020. This act established the Do Not Pay Working System that EO 14249 builds upon. The existing legislative framework already requires agencies to identify high-error programs, estimate improper payments, implement corrective actions, and report annually. The EOs add executive-branch emphasis and new verification layers, but they operate within — not in place of — this existing statutory infrastructure. ³

The administration’s DOGE operation sought access to Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service payment systems in a manner a federal judge described as “chaotic and haphazard.” In early February 2025, DOGE staff gained access to BFS systems containing names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and bank account information for millions of Americans. On February 6, DOGE staffer Marko Elez — a 25-year-old with no prior government experience — was discovered to have been “mistakenly” given read/write access to the Secure Payment System, which handles trillions in annual federal payments. Treasury stated the write access was given for one day, and that Elez “never knew” and “never exercised” the write privileges. A coalition of 19 state attorneys general, led by New York AG Letitia James, sued. Judge Jeannette Vargas (SDNY) issued a preliminary injunction blocking DOGE access, finding the launch was conducted under “inexplicable urgency and time constraints.” Access was gradually restored: one individual in April 2025, four DOGE team members in May 2025, after Treasury certified proper vetting, clearances, and training. ⁴

The paper check elimination disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, and implementation occurred alongside massive IRS workforce cuts. Approximately 5 million taxpayers (6% of filers) currently receive paper refund checks. More than 5 million households (~4% of all U.S. households) are unbanked, with disproportionate rates among American Indian/Alaska Native (12.2%), Black (10.6%), and Hispanic (9.5%) communities. The NYU Tax Law Center warned that “rushed implementation of this Executive Order risks jeopardizing millions of taxpayers’ access to their tax refunds.” Meanwhile, the IRS lost approximately 28% of its workforce (from ~102,000 to ~74,000) through DOGE-driven cuts in 2025, including 31% of its auditors and 27% of total staff entering the 2026 tax season — the very workforce needed to implement the electronic payment transition, verify taxpayer identities, and administer the exceptions process for unbanked populations. ⁵

Paper checks cost $657 million annually and are 16 times more likely to be reported lost, stolen, or altered than electronic transfers. These figures, cited in the EO and White House fact sheet, are supported by Treasury data. Check fraud reports roughly doubled from approximately 340,000 in 2021 to approximately 680,000 in 2022. Mail theft complaints have risen substantially since 2020. The case for transitioning to electronic payments has broad expert support and is not partisan. Treasury transitioned its check disbursement operations to a designated third-party provider by October 2025. ⁶

Strong Inferences

The EOs’ pre-certification framework creates the infrastructure for executive-branch payment control that DOGE sought through direct system access. EO 14249 requires written justification for every payment, allows the “pause and rapid review” of any payment lacking justification, and centralizes disbursing authority at Treasury. These mechanisms — combined with DOGE’s earlier attempts to access and potentially halt Treasury payments (Musk announced halting payments to Lutheran Family Services in February 2025; DOGE sought to suspend USAID payments) — suggest the EOs formalize what DOGE initially attempted through informal means. The CBPP warned that “attempts to target individual recipients could delay a much larger set of payments like monthly Social Security benefits.” The EOs exempt “direct assistance to individuals” and military/law enforcement spending, but the pre-certification framework for grants and contracts creates a mechanism for executive review of congressionally appropriated spending — a function that raises Impoundment Control Act concerns. ⁷

The administration simultaneously weakened the institutional capacity to detect actual fraud while signing EOs claiming to address it. The administration fired 17 inspectors general (the officials specifically responsible for identifying waste, fraud, and abuse), left over 75% of IG positions vacant, cut the IRS workforce by 28%, and dissolved DOGE itself by November 2025 — eight months before its mandate expired. The Yale Budget Lab projected IRS cuts would cost $198 billion in lost revenue over a decade, primarily from reduced audit capacity of high-net-worth individuals. The GAO Comptroller General noted the GAO had identified reforms that could save $200 billion without mass layoffs. Signing executive orders about fraud prevention while firing the people who detect fraud and cutting the agency that collects revenue represents a gap between stated and revealed preferences. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The narrow factual claim is true: Trump signed two executive orders on March 25, 2025. They exist. They direct Treasury to modernize payments and strengthen fraud prevention. The claim does not say the EOs achieved anything — only that they were signed.

But the framing of “protect America’s bank account against waste, fraud, and abuse” requires scrutiny of what these orders actually do and the context in which they were signed.

Start with the problem definition. The White House fact sheet cites “up to $521 billion annually” in fraud losses — the upper bound of a GAO estimate that includes COVID-era pandemic years when fraud was historically anomalous. The actual FY2024 improper payment figure was $162 billion, of which 84% were overpayments caused primarily by documentation errors and eligibility determination failures, not willful fraud. GAO itself explicitly states that improper payments and fraud are “related but different.” The EOs’ actual interventions — pre-certification, electronic payments, Do Not Pay system expansion — primarily target improper payments, not the systemic fraud measured in GAO’s larger estimate. Citing $521 billion to justify interventions addressing a different, smaller problem is the denominator problem in action.

The paper check elimination is, on its merits, reasonable policy. Paper checks cost $657 million annually, are 16 times more fraud-prone than electronic transfers, and the case for transition has broad expert support. But the September 30, 2025 deadline was aggressive, the IRS had just lost 28% of its workforce, and approximately 5 million unbanked households — disproportionately minority communities — face real obstacles in transitioning. The NYU Tax Law Center warned of “rushed implementation.” The tension between modernization goals and the capacity to implement them safely is the direct consequence of DOGE having gutted the IRS in the same year.

The deeper issue is the gap between the EOs’ stated purpose and the administration’s actual conduct. These orders were signed in March 2025 — the same month DOGE was terminating contracts without fraud evidence, the same period when 17 inspectors general had been fired, the same quarter when DOGE staffers were gaining “chaotic and haphazard” access to the very payment systems the EOs claim to protect. A DOGE staffer was “mistakenly” given write access to the Secure Payment System. The administration’s revealed preference was not to protect Treasury systems from unauthorized access — it was to gain access for political appointees with minimal vetting, until a federal court intervened.

The pre-certification framework in EO 14249 also warrants attention. Requiring written justification for every payment and allowing “pause and rapid review” of unjustified payments creates a mechanism for the executive branch to delay congressionally appropriated spending. This is the payment-system equivalent of the OMB funding freeze that courts blocked in January-February 2025 — repackaged as “fraud prevention.” The exemptions for military, law enforcement, and immigration enforcement while applying scrutiny to grants and contracts (particularly to universities and foreign entities) reveal the priorities: the same spending categories DOGE targeted for ideological termination now face a formal review framework.

Finally, this claim is part of the broader DOGE cluster analyzed in items 219, 230, and 231. The administration’s actual track record on fiscal management — $301 billion increase in federal spending, deficit essentially unchanged, DOGE verified savings of 1-3% of claimed figures, $135 billion in disruption costs, $21.7 billion in DOGE-generated waste — provides the context against which “protect America’s bank account” must be evaluated.

The Bottom Line

The claim is literally true: Trump signed EO 14247 and EO 14249 on March 25, 2025. The orders are real. Payment modernization and fraud prevention are legitimate policy goals with bipartisan support stretching back two decades.

But “protect America’s bank account against waste, fraud, and abuse” is misleading on three levels. First, the problem is inflated: citing the $521 billion upper-bound fraud estimate to justify interventions that primarily address the $162 billion improper payments problem (84% of which are documentation errors, not fraud) overstates the addressable scope by a factor of three. Second, the administration simultaneously weakened the institutional capacity to detect fraud — firing 17 inspectors general, cutting IRS workforce by 28%, dissolving DOGE itself — while signing orders purporting to fight it. Third, these orders were signed during the same period DOGE was gaining “chaotic and haphazard” access to Treasury payment systems, a staffer was “mistakenly” given write access, and courts were blocking unauthorized access to the very systems the EOs claim to protect. The EOs formalize legitimate policy goals that existed before this administration and will exist after it — but the framing of protective stewardship is contradicted by the administration’s own conduct toward these systems.

Footnotes

1. Executive Order 14247, “Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account,” March 25, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/modernizing-payments-to-and-from-americas-bank-account/. Executive Order 14249, “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” March 25, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/protecting-americas-bank-account-against-fraud-waste-and-abuse/. Federal Register: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/28/2025-05524/protecting-americas-bank-account-against-fraud-waste-and-abuse. Treasury implementation page: https://tfx.treasury.gov/eo-resources ↩

2. GAO-24-105833, “Fraud Risk Management: 2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud,” April 2024. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833. GAO-25-107753, “Improper Payments: Information on Agencies’ Fiscal Year 2024 Estimates,” March 2025. $162B total, 84% overpayments. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107753. GAO-24-106608, “Improper Payments and Fraud: How They Are Related but Different,” March 2024. “While all fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are due to fraud.” https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106608 ↩

3. Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019, P.L. 116-117, signed March 2, 2020. Bipartisan sponsors: Carper (D-DE), Johnson (R-WI), Peters (D-MI), Braun (R-IN). https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/375. Prior legislation: Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-300), Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-204), IPERIA of 2012 (P.L. 112-248), Fraud Reduction and Data Analytics Act of 2015 (P.L. 114-186). ↩

4. Courthouse News Service, “Federal judge extends order barring unauthorized DOGE access to Treasury payment system,” February 2025. https://www.courthousenews.com/federal-judge-extends-order-barring-unauthorized-doge-access-to-treasury-payment-system/. Washington Post, “Treasury revoked editing access ‘mistakenly’ given to DOGE staffer,” February 11, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/11/doge-treasury-access-marko-elez/. CNN, “DOGE can access sensitive Treasury payment systems, judge rules,” May 27, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/27/politics/doge-access-sensitive-treasury-payment-systems. NPR, “Federal judge blocks DOGE from accessing sensitive U.S. Treasury Department material,” February 8, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/08/g-s1-47350/states-sue-to-stop-doge-accessing-personal-data ↩

5. NYU Tax Law Center, “Rushed Implementation of Executive Order to Restrict Use of Paper Checks Risks Harming Taxpayers,” 2025. 5 million paper check recipients, 5 million unbanked households, disproportionate minority impact. https://taxlawcenter.org/blog/rushed-implementation-of-executive-order-to-restrict-use-of-paper-checks-risks-harming-taxpayers. IRS workforce data: Federal News Network, “How staffing cuts in 2025 transformed the federal workforce,” January 2026. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/01/how-staffing-cuts-in-2025-transformed-the-federal-workforce/. FDIC, 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households: unbanked rates by race/ethnicity. ↩

6. White House Fact Sheet, “President Donald J. Trump Modernizes Payments to and from America’s Bank Account,” March 25, 2025. $657M annual cost, 16x fraud rate differential. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-modernizes-payments-to-and-from-americas-bank-account/. Treasury announcement: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0223. IRS implementation guidance: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/modernizing-payments-to-and-from-americas-bank-account ↩

7. CBPP, “‘DOGE’ Access to Treasury Payment Systems Raises Serious Risks,” February 2025. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/doge-access-to-treasury-payment-systems-raises-serious-risks. Fortune, “Musk says DOGE is halting Treasury payments to US contractors,” February 2, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/02/musk-doge-treasury-payments-system-halt-us-govenment-contractors-lutheran-charity/. Holland & Knight, “Executive Order on DOGE Cost Efficiency: Major Changes in Federal Contracts and Grants,” March 2025. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/03/executive-order-on-doge-cost-efficiency-major-changes-in-federal ↩

8. Items 219, 230, 231 analyses (this project). Federal News Network, “Judge finds Trump unlawfully fired agency IGs,” September 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2025/09/trump-unlawfully-fired-17-agency-igs-judge-finds-but-wont-reinstate-them/. Yale Budget Lab, “Economist Explains Why DOGE Cuts to the IRS Will Backfire,” March 2025. https://budgetlab.yale.edu/news/250321/economist-explains-why-doge-cuts-irs-will-backfire. Fortune, “DOGE has quietly ceased to exist well ahead of schedule,” November 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/11/23/doge-elon-musk-federal-bureaucracy-budget-cuts-opm-headcount-staffing/ ↩