Former Democratic Treasury Secretaries Condemn DOGE Access to Payment Systems

Five former Democratic Treasury secretaries wrote Monday that the efforts of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to gain access to federal payment systems are a “cause for concern.”

Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen wrote this in a paywalled opinion piece in The New York Times, The Hill reported Monday (Feb. 10).

The former secretaries wrote that DOGE representatives have taken over positions that were previously operated by nonpartisan civil servants, have not been subject to rigorous ethics rules, and lack the training and expertise to handle private data, according to the report.

They added that DOGE’s access to the federal payment system raises “constitutional issues,” per the report.

An excerpt from the secretaries’ opinion piece shared in a post on X by The New York Times Opinion account reads: “Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain.”

Larry Summers wrote in a Monday post on X: “I join Treasury Secretaries Rubin, Geithner, Lew and Yellen in writing this guest essay 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.”

Responding to Summers’ post, Elon Musk wrote in a reply: “Listen Larry, we need to stop government spending like a drunken sailor on fraud & waste or America is gonna go bankrupt. That does mean a lot of grifters will lose their grift and complain loudly about it. Too bad. Deal with it.”

It was reported Saturday (Feb. 8) that a federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s payment system after a group of 19 attorneys general from Democrat-controlled states sued President Donald Trump and the Treasury, arguing that DOGE’s access to treasury data violates the law.

On Monday, it was reported that the Trump administration said in a Sunday (Feb. 9) court filing that the judge’s order blocking DOGE from accessing the payment system also prevents Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from doing his job and is a “remarkable intrusion” on the executive branch.