Musk Says His DOGE Is Suspending Payments to Federal Contractors

Elon Musk says his government efficiency department (DOGE) is halting payments to federal contractors.

“The corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time,” Musk wrote on his X platform Sunday (Feb. 2), saying officials reporting to his so-called Department of Government Efficiency are “rapidly shutting down” payments to a Lutheran social services group.

As Bloomberg News noted in a report on the issue Sunday, the statement suggests Musk — the richest man in the world — could have access to sensitive systems in the U.S. Treasury. The extent of Musk’s access was unclear, though some reports said that his team had only “read only” access.

Those systems, the report added, are tightly controlled, and could contain sensitive information about taxpayers, contractors and beneficiaries. The Treasury has historically maintained its role is to act as the government’s checkbook, and decisions about what gets funded belong to individual agencies based on funds approved by Congress.

DOGE was created amid President Donald Trump’s wave of executive orders upon taking office last month, with the goal of updating federal software and technology to boost efficiency and productivity inside the federal government.

“The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once,” Musk wrote on X.

His statements follow last week’s resignation of David Lebryk, the most senior official at the Treasury, in charge of payment systems at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

The ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, wrote in a Friday letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Musk’s access to the Treasury Department payment system could allow his associates to “illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.”

“I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems … The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States,” Wyden wrote in the letter.

Wyden and other senate Democrats were scheduled to hold a news conference Monday (Feb. 3) afternoon to call attention to the issue.