Bessent says DOGE has saved $50B so far

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said U.S. taxpayers don't need to worry about the security of their private data while Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team seeks to make the federal government more efficient.

The DOGE team has identified an estimated $50 billion in savings so far, Bessent said Tuesday during a Fox News interview. "So that's a very good start."

He added the cost-cutting effort could eventually lead to "several percent of GDP that we are saving."

Meanwhile, Bessent said Americans "don't have to be concerned about any of this," referring to attempts by the team to access a broad range of taxpayer data, including on individuals — an effort that's prompted Democratic lawmakers to raise privacy concerns. 

The team from the Department of Government Efficiency is seeking the data but has not yet accessed it, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. 

Bessent said one person at the Internal Revenue Service "is looking at an outdated IT system, that's all they're doing."

Bessent said two people at Treasury had "read only access" to the payments systems, meaning they don't have the ability to make any changes.  "There are very strict guardrails around them," he said.

Senate Democrats have broadly criticized Bessent for what they call a "lack of candor" about what DOGE workers are doing with U.S. payment systems. 

Last month, the newly-formed DOGE acquired access to the Treasury's payment system. That prompted a senior level civil servant who tried to block the move to abruptly leave. Attorneys general from 19 states and three labor unions also filed lawsuits to prevent DOGE's access to the sensitive system.

Ukraine partnership

Bessent told Fox News he thinks Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will sign an economic partnership agreement with the U.S. in exchange for support in the fight against Russia. 

With the proposal, President Donald Trump wants to "bring the Ukrainian people and the American people closer together economically."

Bessent said Trump wants to show Ukrainians that the U.S. supports them, while demonstrating to U.S. taxpayers that there will be a return on the money that has already been sent to the country.

The agreement from Ukraine will allow Trump to take it to Russian President Vladimir Putin "and negotiate with him on a stronger basis," Bessent said

Bessent's comments come less than a week after the Treasury chief visited Kyiv to present Ukraine with an economic partnership agreement that would be necessary for continued support from the U.S. 

The Trump administration signaled recently that it expects Kyiv to grant access to resources including critical minerals, as well as pledge to purchase U.S. energy exports, in return for its military and economic support against Russia, which invaded in February 2022. 

Trump has criticized the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. provided to Ukraine over the past few years and called for a swift end to the conflict. Top officials from the U.S. and Russia met for a first round of talks over the war in Ukraine earlier this week, but excluded that country's leaders from the meeting.

Penny extinction

Asked whether the U.S. would stop minting new pennies, as Trump instructed earlier this month, Bessent said the president "wants to make the penny extinct. That's part of the cost savings." 

"It's going soon," he said.