Former Treasury Secretaries penned an op-ed Monday expressing their concerns that officials at Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) gained access to the federal payment systems.
Writing in The New York Times, five Democratic Treasury secretaries said their service to the country was founded on the “faithful execution of the law and Constitution of the United States.”
It was written by former secretaries Robert Ruben and Larry Summers, who served under the Clinton administration; Timothy Geithner and Jacob Lew, who served under Obama; and Janet Yellen, Biden’s treasury secretary.
“We were fortunate that during our tenures in office no effort was made to unlawfully undermine the nation’s financial commitments,” they wrote. “Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that such efforts are underway today.”
DOGE was sued last week after receiving access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system. The department handles $6 trillion annually, distributing the funds for Social Security, Medicare, salaries for federal workers, payments for grant recipients and government contractors and Americans’ tax records.
Democrats have sounded the alarm that people’s confidential and sensitive information is in the hands of an unelected person: Musk, the world’s richest man.
In their op-ed, the former secretaries noted the country’s payment system has been operated by a small group of nonpartisan civil servants. Now, they say DOGE has taken over positions that were meant to be impartial.
“These political actors have not been subject to the same rigorous ethics rules as civil servants, and one has explicitly retained his role in a private company, creating at best the appearance of financial conflicts of interest,” they wrote. “They lack training and expertise to handle private, personal data – like Social Security numbers and bank account information.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked the officials from the department’s payment system, though gaining access to the system isn’t the largest problem the former secretaries foresee.
“While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming,” they said. “We take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.”
The secretaries highlighted that conservative Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts previously agreed that Congress has the power of the purse. They noted that not since the Nixon administration had they seen such a threat to the system.
They called on new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to commit to upholding the law as DOGE officials examine the federal budget. Bessent has confirmed a review of the federal payment system is underway, but said DOGE staff will have “read-only” access to the information.
“Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default,” the former secretaries w.rote “And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain.”
