Why is Musk’s DOGE trying to access payment systems inside the Treasury Department? It’s not clear what relevance this would have to his ostensible role, which is to search for savings and inefficiencies in government, not to directly influence whether previously authorized government obligations are honored.
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I contacted a few former officials at the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to try to gauge what this means. What was striking is the level of alarm they evinced about it. Here’s how the Post describes these systems:
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
Former officials I spoke with were at a loss to explain why Musk would want such access.
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“Anybody who would have access to these systems is in a position to turn off funding selectively,” said Michael Linden, a former OMB official who is now director of Families Over Billionaires, a group fighting Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. “The only reason Musk wants to get himself in there must be because he wants to turn some things off.”
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What also alarms these officials is that this is unfolding even as a debt ceiling crisis looms.
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“The payment systems are controlled by a small number of career officials precisely to protect them and the full faith and credit of the United States from political interference,” said Jesse Lee, who was a senior adviser to the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. Or as Linden put it: “This is exactly the kind of thing you
do not want political appointees getting involved in.”
All of which is why it’s critical to know whether Trump directly authorized this move by Musk. Trump’s executive order creating DOGE orders agencies to give it access to “all” unclassified records and systems. As the
Post notes, that would appear to include these Treasury ones.
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Even if a relatively innocent explanation for this is possible—maybe DOGE merely hopes to study how efficient they are—the move clearly alarmed [longtime government veteran David Lebryk at Treasury] enough to prompt his resignation. Did Trump want Musk to have this access, and if so, for what purpose?
[...]
If Trump did greenlight it, Moss said, it would mean he’s “authorizing Elon to shove his weight into the most crucial parts of our financial mechanisms,” and “exposes the basic functions of government to the whims of a nongovernmental employee.”
New Republic
Trump recently said he thinks Musk is doing a great job. I think we can assume he authorized Musk to just do whatever he wants. Musk bought Trump. He'd have to start abusing Trump himself to lose favor.
Whatever Musk intends with this new effort, this isn’t part of any war on the “deep state.” We’re witnessing a broad assault on that genuinely meritocratic achievement, the civil service—one that could enable right-wing elites to corruptly loot the place, or install a highly “personalist” government marked above all by loyalty to Trump himself, or some combination of the two. And by all indications, that larger war is fully backed by the president himself.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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