Why Musk’s entry to the Treasury fee system is so harmful | EUROtoday
Granting Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency entry to the Treasury’s fee techniques is “as dangerous as it gets,” critics have warned.
Last week President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly gave DOGE representatives – whom no one elected or have little oversight – entry to the interior federal fee system that disperses trillions of {dollars} annually, together with Social Security and Medicare advantages, the New York Times first reported.
The system, run by non-political employees, can be answerable for paying out tax credit for people and companies, and, crucially, grants and funds to authorities contractors. Some of these embrace organizations that compete with Musk’s corporations.
Musk and his DOGE crew “think the payment system should be overseen by political appointees selected by President Trump,” in keeping with the Wall Street Journal. Now, he has management of the fee system which is an important lifeline to tens of 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 transfer.
“This is not the attitude of people who are simply trying to make the payment system more ‘efficient,’” Nathan Tankus, analysis 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.”
![Elon Musk and his DOGE team have taken over the Treasury payment system. They ‘think the payment system should be overseen by political appointees selected by President [Donald] Trump’](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/27/13/2025-01-21T002153Z_1646586557_RC2RDCAI0QOS_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-INAUGURATION.jpg)
DOGE will not be a authorities company and but Musk and his cost-cutting associates now reportedly maintain unprecedented entry to the Bureau of Fiscal Service – what’s, in essence, the federal authorities’s checkbook.
It incorporates extremely delicate and confidential private info belonging to each taxpayer within the U.S.
The scale of the bureau is huge. It disbursed 87.9 p.c of all federal funds by way of the 2023 fiscal 12 months, in keeping with figures on its web site. In the identical interval, it collected $5.47 trillion in federal income.
That included distributing $3.4 trillion in federal funds by way of applications corresponding to Social Security, veterans’ advantages and revenue tax returns to greater than 100 million folks. It additionally supplied human assets companies to greater than 21,000 authorities workers.
Access to the funds system has traditionally been restricted to a handful of non-political employees as a result of it incorporates confidential knowledge belonging to tens of millions of Americans.
Tankus warned that if Trump’s administration is ready to entry 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 additionally warned that Musk might try to “go after” the nonprofits he dislikes.

Warnings about Musk’s management of the system observe the departure of a long-time Treasury official, who reportedly resisted permitting DOGE personnel entry to the division’s fee system. David Lebryk, a profession civil servant, all of the sudden introduced his retirement on Friday, in keeping with the Washington Post.
Lebryk had served on the Treasury for many years and his departure is claimed to have come as a shock to colleagues.
According to CNN, Lebryk pushed again towards one Trump-affiliated worker who requested concerning the Treasury’s capability to cease funds.
A supply acquainted with the division instructed the community that it isn’t the bureau’s position to resolve which funds to make. Rather, it’s “just to make the f***ing payments.”
The Independent has contacted DOGE and the White House for remark.
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a livid letter to Bessent on Monday the place she accused him of handing over entry 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 rating member of the Senate Committee on Finance, additionally 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 stated in an announcement.
“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 TimesMusk’s intentions with the Treasury are “part of a broader review of the payments system” and never “an effort to arbitrarily block individual payments,” folks acquainted with the plans instructed the newspaper.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-treasury-payments-b2691375.html