No US government audits for the last 100 years? Here’s why ‘Shark Tank’ star Kevin O’Leary is wrong

ABC’s "Shark Tank" star Kevin O’Leary said the federal government is "all fat" and said billionaire Elon Musk is "not cutting enough."  

In a Feb. 24 interview on CNN, O’Leary, a Canadian investor who calls himself "Mr. Wonderful," said this about the federal government: "One hundred years of never being scrutinized, never been examined, never looking for any efficiencies," he said. "Finally, here's an individual who's willing to do it for free with extremely great executional skills."

Since President Donald Trump tapped entrepreneur Elon Musk, he has been the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The Tesla CEO, X owner and Trump campaign mega-donor went so far as to promote his cost-cutting efforts by wielding a chainsaw at a recent event.

When CNN host Laura Coates questioned the efficiency of what she called Musk’s "thrash and burn" approach, O’Leary said it isn’t possible to be surgically precise: "You have to cut more because you just don't know. There's no way to do it. Remember, we've never audited government for 100 years."

O’Leary is wrong. The federal government has conducted audits for decades, per federal law, and it has publicly shared the results. The Clinton-Gore administration also undertook a massive cost-cutting effort, but much of that followed congressional bipartisan approval.

"It is absurd to say that auditing has never happened," said Robin J. Kempf, an associate professor at University of Colorado, and a former inspector general for Kansas’ Medicaid program .

O’Leary did not respond to an inquiry for this fact-check.

In 1978, Congress passed the Inspector General Act in response to anti-corruption efforts that began after the 1972 Watergate break-in and cover-up that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Agency inspectors general, from NASA to Homeland Security, were tasked with conducting independent and objective audits, investigations and inspections and with preventing and detecting waste, fraud and abuse.

Their findings are not secret. Inspectors general provide semiannual reports to Congress and immediately report to agency heads if they find egregious problems.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency issued an annual report for 2023 that showed that work by inspectors general led to more than 4,000 prosecutions and identified nearly $93.1 billion in potential savings. 

The findings resulted in about 3,000 suspensions, reprimands and terminations for federal contractors and federal, state and local employees.

Trump fired 17 inspectors general during his first week in office. (He said he would install new ones.)

Separately, Congress in 1921 founded the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan, 3,000-employee investigative arm that examines the use of public funds, evaluates federal programs and policies, and undertakes other forms of federal oversight. (Until 2004 it was called the General Accounting Office.)

The office regularly produces reports on topics such as opioid addiction, affordable housing, and the federal response to COVID-19. On Feb. 25, the agency released its biennial High Risk List, which cited 38 areas of federal operations that have "serious vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or in need of transformation."

The agency says its efforts have produced nearly $759 billion in cumulative savings, or an average of $40 billion per year, over the past 19 years.

Congress also carries out oversight through its committees. These include making sure that federal programs are fulfilling their missions and working in a cost-effective and efficient manner, and investigating waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Here are a few audit findings in 2024:

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• COVID-19 recovery programs: The FBI wrote in January 2024 that the federal agencies found a combined $300 billion in fraud from pandemic recovery programs that  "make the fraud the largest in history."

• Medicare, Medicaid, and other health and human services funds: The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general said in December 2024 that it had found $7 billion in expected recoveries resulting from investigations and audits conducted in 2024 and 1,548 criminal and civil enforcement actions. The inspector general posts its recommendations online, where they are publicly accessible.

• Costs for lead service line replacement: The Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General issued a report in October identifying nearly $1 billion in questionable costs and funds for lead service line replacement in the states. 

Audits are not only about money; some focus on how to improve federal agency’s missions. The inspector general audited the FBI’s counter terrorism program in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Government auditing is highly structured and guided by standards for auditing and performance assessments established by the Government Accountability Office, Kempf said. 

"It is very focused on arriving at an independent assessment based on accuracy and a lack of bias," Kempf said. If Musk and DOGE are truly auditing, she said, "we should be able to see the evidence that supports every conclusion and recommendation. There should be transparency."

"None of that is happening with DOGE," she said.

DOGE has faced lawsuits alleging a lack of transparency. Although Musk said DOGE’s actions are "maximally transparent," White House officials have resisted providing basic information for weeks, including disclosing who is DOGE’s administrator. A day after a judge questioned Justice Department attorneys about who is in charge, the White House told media outlets Feb. 25 that Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service. Gleason is a career official who has worked under presidents of both parties.

Ryan McDonough, an assistant accounting professor at Rutgers University, told PolitiFact that he doesn’t believe DOGE is "claiming to conduct audits in accordance with government auditing standards."

O’Leary in the CNN interview invoked a different model: the private equity playbook for cutting expenses by cutting "deep" and "fast" and then hiring back.

But this misses an important distinction: Unlike companies, which have a profit motive, the government isn’t a for-profit business. Although efficiency is important, its primary mission is to provide public services and deliver equal treatment to citizens. 

"One can always learn from other institutional arrangements, and private equity is good at cutting redundancy, focused on value creation," said Shivaram Rajgopal, an accounting and auditing professor at Columbia Business School.

Rajgopal said such a model has "some value" for government auditing, but "moving fast and breaking things is not a great recipe for government, in my view."

O’Leary said, "we've never audited government for 100 years."

For decades, inspectors general have audited the federal government, looking for waste, fraud and abuse. Their findings are public and accessible online.

O’Leary left people with the impression that the federal government hasn’t been audited for a century. That’s ridiculously wrong. 

We rate his statement Pants on Fire!

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