Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he personally vetted the Treasury employees on Elon Musk's government efficiency team who have read-only access to federal payment data, and that there's been no "tinkering" with the department's payment systems.
"It is an operational review. It is not an ideological review," Bessent said in an interview on Bloomberg Television with Saleha Mohsin on Thursday. "The ability to change the system sits over at the Federal Reserve. We don't even run the system."
Bessent voiced confidence for Musk's team. "These are highly trained professionals. This is not some roving band running around doing things. This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings," he said. not supported.
Bessent's department has been an early focus of the Department of Government Efficiency, the Musk-led effort to identify wasteful spending and modernize federal technology.
Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, DOGE has been instrumental in offering a buyout to civilian federal retirees, canceling government leases and contracts, and even dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But Bessent said the Internal Revenue Service would be largely spared from DOGE's cost-cutting — at least until after the April 15 filing deadline, with customer-facing employees excluded from the government-wide deferred resignation program until mid-May.
Still, trillions of dollars of federal payments flow through Treasury every year, and DOGE's access gives Musk visibility into sensitive-but-unclassified information about taxpayers, beneficiaries, contractors and employees.
Members of Congress, federal employee unions and privacy advocates have protested that access, citing the billionaire's sprawling business interests. Musk, the world's richest man, is CEO of SpaceX, which has billions in federal contracts to launch rockets, and of Tesla Inc., which is regulated by multiple departments and agencies.
In posts on X, his social media site, Musk has also claimed the ability to stop federal payments, but Bessent said that DOGE's read-only access doesn't give him that power.
"Most of that happens above us" at federal departments and agencies that manage their own budgets, Bessent said.
The Treasury Department — under both Democratic and Republican administrations — has long maintained it doesn't have the power to stop or prioritize payments authorized by agencies.
Still, Bessent expressed enthusiasm for Musk's efforts.
"I think there are gigantic cost savings for the American people here," he said. "I believe that this DOGE program, in my adult life, is one of the most important audits of government, or changes to government structure, that we have seen."
