DOGE says $312M in loans were given to children during COVID pandemic

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced a further wave of contract terminations late Saturday, noting that they also identified thousands of cases where more than $300 million in loans were granted to children.

The announcements come as the Elon Musk-led agency continues to root out waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government. 

DOGE said it identified that the Small Business Administration (SBA) granted nearly 5,600 loans for $312 million to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan. The loans were issued in 2020 and 2021 – while the world struggled with the COVID-19 pandemic – and it is unclear what they were used for. 

“While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name,” the agency wrote.

“@DOGE and @SBAgov are working together to solve this problem this week,” they added.

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When making the announcement, DOGE shared a post on X from Tuesday when it also revealed that in 2020 and 2021 the SBA issued 3,095 loans for $333 million to borrowers over 115 years old.

The borrowers were still marked as alive in the Social Security database. In one case, a 157-year-old individual received $36,000 in loans, the agency said. The loans included PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan) loans. 

In President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday, he bashed instances where he said millions of people aged over 100 were listed on the Social Security database, with one being as old as 360 years of age.

“I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly,” Trump said. “3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.”

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DOGE also said they canceled one Department of Agriculture contract worth $10.3 million, which it said was “ironically” initiated for “identifying unnecessary contracts.”

The cost-saving agency said the termination was one of 162 nonessential contracts it canceled with a total ceiling value of $205 million and savings of $90 million. The agency did not specify what areas of the federal government the remaining contract terminations were made.

Meanwhile, Musk met with a small group of House Republicans on Wednesday evening to discuss the quest to find as much as $1 trillion in government waste, people familiar with the discussion told Fox News Digital.

“The executive DOGE team is confident, they think they can get $1 trillion,” one lawmaker familiar with the meeting told Fox News Digital. 

“Now, we’ll see, right? And the thing is, he acknowledged that we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re going to correct them very quickly.”

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.