Musk’s Team Given Access to U.S. Government Payment System, New York Times Says

Reuters

15:20 JST, February 2, 2025

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk and his government efficiency team have been given access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, resolving a days-long standoff, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

Musk, who chairs the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, has been tasked by President Donald Trump to identify fraud and waste in the government and had sought access to the system Treasury uses to dole out federal funds.

His efforts were resisted by a career Treasury official, David Lebryk, who was placed on leave this week and then retired. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk’s team access, the Times reported.

The system sends out more than $6 trillion per year in payments on behalf of federal agencies and contains the personal information of millions of Americans who receive Social Security payments, tax refunds and other monies from the government.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, appeared to confirm that Musk’s team has access in a post on the social network Bluesky.

“Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,” Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, posted on Saturday.

In a letter to Bessent on Friday, Wyden raised concerns that any “politically-motivated meddling” in the payment system “risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”

The Department of Government Efficiency is not a federal department but a unit assembled at Trump’s order working out of the White House.

In a post on X on Saturday, Musk claimed without providing evidence that officials at the Treasury Department had been instructed to approve payments to “known fraudulent or terrorist groups.”