Musk gains access to Treasury Department’s payment system

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late Friday.

News ID: ۲۰۰۰۷۷۰

02 February 2025

EghtesadOnline:  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending, Spokesman reports.

The new authority follows a standoff this past week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government.

The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks.

Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Donald Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper.

It is not clear whether the team led by Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has blocked any payments since gaining access to the system.

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not a government department, but a team within the administration.

It was put together at Trump’s direction by Musk to fan out across federal agencies seeking ways to cut spending, reduce the size of the federal workforce and bring more efficiency to the bureaucracy. Most of those working on the initiative were recruited by Musk and his aides.

Similar DOGE teams have begun demanding access to data and systems at other federal agencies, but none of those agencies controls the flow of money in the way the Treasury Department does.

Bessent granted access to the payments system to a handful of staff members affiliated with DOGE, including Tom Krause, the CEO of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, according to one of the people familiar with the change.

Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government. / Mehr