To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following: - Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible. - All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING! - The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily. The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already! Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious. When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.

“Why don’t universities pay research costs with their endowments” is a bad argument. Grants aren’t charity. These are contracts where universities are being paid to carry out work on behalf of the public. Why shouldn’t the government be expected to pay the full cost of the work being done on their behalf? Universities shouldn’t get everything they ask for - the government should absolutely only pay legitimate expenses, and I would fully support any effort to make sure that is happening. And many university endowments are absurd, and the push to accumulate large endowments has poisoned universities. If the government doesn’t like how much money they’re sitting on, they can tax them. But don’t ruin science to punish rich universities. If the issue is that people don’t want the government to fund biomedical research, well then don’t fund grants at all. Funding them, demanding that grantees do the work they’ve said they will, and then not paying for it is bullshit.

Can you believe that universities with tens of billions in endowments were siphoning off 60% of research award money for “overhead”? What a ripoff!

Someone might consider reminding Texas senators and congresspersons how much money the MD Anderson Cancer Center got from the NIH last year, and that their overhead rate is 62%. @MDAndersonNews

Indirect costs or IDCs can be re-negotiated rather than abruptly and drastically reduced to 15%. This will profoundly constrict the drug discovery pipeline for brain diseases and cancer. Academics & Industry folks Agree. Raise the cap, do the Math @DOGE @elonmusk

Last year, $9B of the $35B that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted for research was used for administrative overhead, what is known as “indirect costs.” Today, NIH lowered the maximum indirect cost rate research institutions can charge the government to 15%, above what many major foundations allow and much lower than the 60%+ that some institutions charge the government today. This change will save more than $4B a year effective immediately.