OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
12:26 PM – Monday, April 14, 2025
On Monday, Shad White, the state auditor for Mississippi, will make public a summary of audits that his office completed during his term — which totaled to $400 million in waste.
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“In the last few weeks, we’ve jokingly started calling ourselves MOGE, the Mississippi Office of Government Efficiency, like Elon Musk’s DOGE,” White told Fox News Digital, referring to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration.
“We approach our work with the same attention to every penny as DOGE, and I’m happy to be Mississippi’s Musk,” White said.
The auditor’s office informed the state’s politicians of its findings. However, White also added that he was personally powerless to stop the unnecessary spending.
“We’ve been working on this project really for the last couple of years. And what’s encouraging right now is that President Trump and Elon Musk are doing DOGE, which has raised public awareness about the amount of fraud, waste and abuse in government,” White stated in his exclusive interview.
“People are starting to look closely at what we’ve uncovered. In our time in the state auditor’s office, my team and I have uncovered about $400 million worth of waste.”
White will release an 800-page report later on Monday that will break down the findings.
He argued that Medicaid is a significant problem in the whole equation since it provides tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to Mississippians who are not eligible, due to their income.
According to him, one state agency was also spending around $6,000 just on televisions, whereas the comparably bloated federal government only spends roughly $2,000 on comparable equipment.
“So, if you think the federal government is inefficient, I promise you, your state governments around the country are likely even less efficient,” White continued.
When asked about cutting unnecessary expenditure in DEI and other areas, White responded that there is still more waste, overspending, and possible fraud to look for first.
According to White, it is critical to use federal and other public funding efficiently since 20% of residents in the Magnolia State live below the poverty level.
Welfare appropriations accounted for millions of wasted expenditures, such as approved community gardens that were never constructed, or charity organizations that promised to utilize funds to aid the underprivileged — though they never did.
“We found dollars supposed to be going to poor folks going to pay for sponsorship of beauty pageants,” he added.
“Really, I think the big-picture point here is, this kind of waste happens at every level of government. And now that DOJ is taking the lead and showing the country how much fraud, waste and abuse there is, it’s really incumbent on every single state government to take a look at their own house and make sure that that fraud, waste, and abuse isn’t happening in state government, too.”
States have different statutes governing the functions of state auditors.
White noted that some jurisdictions, notably Alabama, have auditor jobs with fewer statutory authority than his in Jackson, when asked if he has coordinated on regional DOGE-type projects with other Deep South states or with officials in his immediate vicinity.
However, he also stated that Cindy Byrd, an Oklahoma auditor, is engaged in a similar project to find government waste in the Sooner State as well.
“We [state auditors] are in conversation with one another — and whether it’s your state auditor or a key state legislator or the governor, really, every state needs to be starting a DOGE,” he concluded.
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