'Mississippi Musk': State auditor's MOGE report finds $400M in government waste

Fox News

14-04-2025

EXCLUSIVE: On Monday, Mississippi state auditor Shad White will release a compilation of audits conducted by his office that tabulated a collective $400 million in waste over the course of his tenure.
"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.
While the auditor's office cannot cut any of the wasteful spending, it alerts state lawmakers to what it discovers.
"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 said in his exclusive interview.
"So, 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."
That figure will be broken down in an 800-page report, which White will make public later Monday.
He said that Medicaid is a major issue, in that tens of millions of dollars in subsidies are going to income-ineligible Mississippians.
One state agency was spending nearly $6,000 each on televisions, which the similarly bloated feds pay about $2,000 for similar tech, he said.
"So, if you think the federal government is inefficient, I promise you, your state governments around the country are likely even less efficient," he said.
Asked about slashing wasteful spending in DEI and elsewhere, White said that even in a red state like the Magnolia State, there is a lot to be discovered and trimmed down.
"[W]hen you dig into what they're doing with all of this staff time and all of these resources, they were doing things like holding microaggression training sessions for engineers — I don't know why we need to do that. They were handing out grants for social justice yoga for preschoolers. Just crazy stuff," he said, as $11 million in taxpayer funding has gone to DEI at colleges alone.
In the Magnolia State, 20% of people live below the poverty line, so efficient spending of federal and other public funds is paramount, White said.
Millions of misspent dollars came from welfare appropriations, including approved community gardens that were never built, or nonprofits who pledged to use funding to help the poor but instead padded executive salaries.
"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."
State auditor roles vary statutorily from state-to-state.
When asked whether White has worked with neighboring officials or if other Deep South states have collaborated on regional DOGE-type initiatives, White said that some states like Alabama have auditor roles with more limited statutory powers than his in Jackson.
But he said that Oklahoma auditor Cindy Byrd is working on a similar endeavor to uncover government waste in the Sooner State.
"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."
Fox News Digital reached out to Reeves for comment on White's past work in identifying waste, fraud and abuse.