Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud

By Jeff Mason and Andy Sullivan

(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said his administration was examining U.S. Treasury debt payments for possible fraud and suggested that the country's $36 trillion debt load might not be that high.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said administration officials who have been combing through payment records in an effort to identify wasteful spending have turned their attention to the debt payments that play a central role in the global financial system.

"We're even looking at Treasuries," Trump said. "There could be a problem - you've been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem."

He added: "It could be that a lot of those things don't count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought."

It was not clear whether Trump was referring to debt service or other government payments made by the Treasury Department.

The United States currently has $36.2 trillion public debt outstanding, according to the U.S. Treasury, equal to more than 120% of GDP. Because the U.S. government spends more money than it collects, Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress will have to authorize more borrowing sometime this year to avert a debt default that could have catastrophic consequences.

Trump's proposed tax cuts would add trillions of dollars more in debt, independent budget watchdogs say.

Trump has tasked Elon Musk with an ambitious overhaul of the federal government, sparking street protests in Washington and accusations that the Trump administration is breaking the law.

Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" has disrupted operations at several federal agencies and has raised privacy and security concerns while accessing sensitive payroll and spending records.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Musk's team on Saturday from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments, citing a risk that sensitive information could be improperly disclosed.

After the ruling, Musk said a do-not-pay list of entities that should not receive government payments should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a Trump appointee, said last week that Musk's team had "read only" access to the payment system, which would not give them power to make changes.

Trump's attempt to freeze wide swaths of domestic aid has been blocked in court, but project managers across the country say billions of dollars nevertheless have been withheld for clean energy and transportation projects. 

Some health clinics say they have been forced to lay off staff and shutter facilities because they have not been able to access federal funding.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andy Sullivan; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Brad Brooks; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Andrea Ricci)