Donald Trump’s ‘small business guru’ has revealed the extent of DOGE leader Elon Musk’s reforms within her agency. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Kelly Loeffler praised Musk for uncovering massive fraud, waste and abuse and bringing an entrepreneur’s mindset to the White House.

Speaking with the Daily Mail in an exclusive sit-down interview on Friday, Loeffler, who normally sits next to Musk at Cabinet meetings, shared that the DOGE leader has found success by treating the government like a small business. ‘I’m incredibly grateful to Elon Musk and his entire team at DOGE. I mean, these are hard working patriots. They are in the office late. They’re here early. They’re solving problems,’ she said.

‘We have found $630 million in fraud thanks to the DOGE team’s efforts.’ Musk’s team found that the hundreds of millions of dollars in SBA loans went to individuals aged older than 115 or younger than 11, according to Social Security data.

The massive fraud took place when the agency oversaw the allocation of billions worth of COVID-related funding, though it was first identified by DOGE in March. In addition to fraud, DOGE also identified wasteful contracts worth billions that the agency has since canceled, the SBA boss shared.

‘We’ve ended those contracts that would have cost taxpayers $3 billion and we’ve also found areas where we can make this agency restored to its original founding mission of serving small businesses,’ Loeffler told the Daily Mail. She touted her efforts ‘reducing our workforce to pre-COVID levels and doing more with less, because that’s what small businesses do.’

‘They always do more with less,’ she added. ‘The federal government can do the same.’ DOGE estimates it has found over $170 billion in fraud, waste and abuse since the beginning of Trump’s term, according to its website. That averages out to over $1,000 per U.S. taxpayer, per DOGE’s calculations.

DOGE is ‘doing exactly what all of us in the Cabinet who come from the private sector would do, which is, you come in and make an assessment of what can we do better?’ Of all the U.S. agencies being reformed by DOGE, SBA ranks seventh for the amount of savings uncovered, according to the DOGE website.

SBA spending has ballooned massively since the COVID epidemic, federal data shows , rising from around half a billion dollars in 2019 to $33 billion in 2024. Loeffler also told the Daily Mail that the president instructed her to prioritize loans to American small businesses that are focused on manufacturing. ‘We live in a country that should be able to make its own nuts, bolts, screws and fasteners that build this country,’ she said. ‘We don’t do that anymore.’

Earlier this year, the SBA announced it cut over $100 billion in regulations to advance its ‘Made in America’ campaign to help promote manufacturing. ‘Investment is needed more for AI enabled CNC machines, for example,’ Loeffler said. Computer numerical control (CNC) machines are the cutting-edge, often AI-enabled, manufacturing instruments used for mass production. ‘We were impressed by how many small businesses are already employing AI to increase productivity and efficiency in their operations,’ she told the Daily Mail.

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