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Granting Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency access to the Treasury’s payment systems is “as dangerous as it gets,” critics have warned.
Last week President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly gave DOGE representatives – whom nobody elected or have little oversight – access to the internal federal payment system that disperses trillions of dollars each year, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, the New York Times first reported.
The system, run by non-political staff, is also responsible for paying out tax credits for individuals and businesses, and, crucially, grants and payments to government contractors. Some of those include organizations that compete with Musk’s companies.
Musk and his DOGE team “think the payment system should be overseen by political appointees selected by President Trump,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Now, he has control of the payment system which is a vital lifeline to millions of Americans.
“Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” Musk posted on X over the weekend. “This needs to stop NOW!”
Critics have sounded the alarm over the move.
“This is not the attitude of people who are simply trying to make the payment system more ‘efficient,’” Nathan Tankus, research director of the Modern Money Network, writes in Rolling Stone. “They have a very clear and specific agenda, which involves unilaterally cutting spending, particularly spending they perceive to be going to their ideological foes.”
DOGE is not a government agency and yet Musk and his cost-cutting associates now reportedly hold unprecedented access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service – what is, in essence, the federal government’s checkbook.
It contains highly sensitive and confidential personal information belonging to every taxpayer in the U.S.
The scale of the bureau is vast. It disbursed 87.9 percent of all federal payments through the 2023 fiscal year, according to figures on its website. In the same period, it collected $5.47 trillion in federal revenue.
That included distributing $3.4 trillion in federal payments through programs such as Social Security, veterans’ benefits and income tax returns to more than 100 million people. It also provided human resources services to more than 21,000 government employees.
Access to the payments system has historically been limited to a handful of non-political staff because it contains confidential data belonging to millions of Americans.
Tankus warned that if Trump’s administration is able to access the “choke point” — the Bureau of the Fiscal Service — then “they could also possibly stop paying federal employees they have forced on paid administrative leave, coercing them to resign.”
He also warned that Musk could attempt to “go after” the nonprofits he dislikes.
Warnings about Musk’s control of the system follow the departure of a long-time Treasury official, who reportedly resisted allowing DOGE personnel access to the department’s payment system. David Lebryk, a career civil servant, suddenly announced his retirement on Friday, according to the Washington Post.
Lebryk had served at the Treasury for decades and his departure is said to have come as a shock to colleagues.
According to CNN, Lebryk pushed back against one Trump-affiliated employee who asked about the Treasury’s capacity to stop payments.
A source familiar with the department told the network that it is not the bureau’s role to decide which payments to make. Rather, it is “just to make the f***ing payments.”
The Independent has contacted DOGE and the White House for comment.
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a furious letter to Bessent on Monday where she accused him of handing over access to the system “to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies.”
“It is extraordinarily dangerous to meddle with the critical systems that process trillions of dollars of transactions each year,” Warren warned.
Fellow Democratic senator Ron Wyden, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, also accused Musk of “politically-motivated meddling.”
“I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden said in a statement.
“I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
According to the Times, Musk’s intentions with the Treasury are “part of a broader review of the payments system” and not “an effort to arbitrarily block individual payments,” people familiar with the plans told the newspaper.
