Is DOGE even doable? Elon Musk’s plan to cut as much as $2 trillion in federal spending will be harder than it sounds

Geoff Colvin
Updated Wed, January 29, 2025

Elon Musk has a new job doing something he knows a great deal about: firing people. Lots of people. Now he’s about to test his axing skills on the greatest downsizing challenge in American history.

Musk is the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a nongovernmental group formed in November by President-elect Trump to cut back government regulations, dismiss unneeded workers, and save money. Musk has said DOGE could cut “at least $2 trillion” from the $6.75 trillion federal budget.

Musk’s original co-leader at DOGE was Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech entrepreneur and candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. A White House spokesperson said on Monday that Ramaswamy was leaving DOGE; sources close to Ramaswamy told the New York Times and other news organizations that he planned to run for governor of Ohio. But over the first two months of the initiative, the two have rallied tech-industry luminaries to pitch ideas for rooting out cumbersome rules and eliminating waste. Venture capital titan Marc Andreessen described himself on a recent podcast as an “unpaid intern” for DOGE.


DOGE’s overall ambition is staggering; its leaders’ most specific rhetoric, however, has focused on slashing jobs. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that they anticipate “mass headcount reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” which they said would be a primary tool for cutting costs.

If that’s the goal, Musk looks like the ideal man for the job. He has sacked significant numbers of workers at SpaceX and Tesla—he’s CEO of both. For sheer exuberant terminating, nothing can match his performance at Twitter, since renamed X. When he bought the company in 2022 he began mass layoffs almost immediately, firing thousands of Twitter’s 8,000 workers overnight. Some got the news by email. Others could only infer they were dismissed when they couldn’t log into the internal computer system. A few were even fired by accident and had to be brought back. Musk later said he had reduced staff by about 80%.

Among federal employees, DOGE anxiety has been rising, enhanced by the fact that the group has shrouded its plans in deep secrecy and has been ultra-disciplined about avoiding leaks. It’s easy to picture Washington trembling at the thought of being subjected to the Twitter playbook.

But as other captains of industry have painfully found, government is different from the private sector in peculiar ways. Shrinking any element of it—from headcount to the budget to the pages of rules in the Federal Register—is a thankless and often Sisyphean task.


DOGE and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But here’s what they’re up against.

Dismissals and regulatory change go hand in hand—very slowly. DOGE’s publicly stated plan is to identify federal regulations that appear to be invalid under two Supreme Court decisions, from 2022 and 2024, that limit the rulemaking power of federal agencies. President Trump will then nullify “thousands of such regulations,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in their op-ed. Fewer regulations mean a lighter workload and fewer employees. But they also noted that to reach their goals, regulations will have to be “fully rescinded.” That’s a potentially multiyear process that requires explaining proposed changes and inviting public comments. Many regulations have constituencies, including in the business world, with a stake in the status quo, and any changes are subject to legal challenges even after the regulation is gone. Bottom line: Some regulations won’t succumb easily.

Layoffs don’t save much money. Musk has emphasized that cost savings are central to DOGE's mission, but labor costs are a small part of federal spending—between 4% and 5% of Uncle Sam’s budget. Payrolls are not where the money is. “If you eliminate 25% of all federal jobs, you would save roughly 1% of federal spending” says Brian Riedl, a Washington-based economist who has been a Senate staffer and worked for Republican officeholders. The vast majority of government spending goes out the door in the form of benefits to voters—Social Security, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, and many more. All those benefits have powerful constituencies and are extremely difficult to reduce.

Federal workers will fight back. About 1 million federal employees belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they have been preparing to take on the new administration since before the election. Trump has said he will impose an employee category called Schedule F, reclassifying career civil service employees as political employees, who lack civil service protections and can be fired quickly. (On Monday, he issued an executive order to this effect.) Government unions are trying to protect their members from being classified as Schedule F by appealing to the federal Office of Personnel Management and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Even if they lose, they may throw sand in the gears.

DOGE won’t have the power a CEO enjoys. Musk could fire employees of his companies in an eyeblink because he’s CEO (and at Twitter, majority owner). But DOGE “doesn’t have any power,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the center-right American Action Forum. “They’re an outside advisory group who are going to generate ideas. They are essentially a very high-profile think tank.” DOGE’s power arises from President Trump’s presumed willingness to execute its recommendations; he could ignore any or even most of them if the political price of job and spending cuts were to become too high.

Momentum, as represented by Trump’s decisive win in November, is on DOGE’s side. History is less so. DOGE is looking broadly for ways to reduce costs. But in the past 50 years, annual federal spending has shrunk from the previous year only five times, never by more than 8%—and only in the aftermath of elevated spending during the financial crisis of 2008–09 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Even under Ronald Reagan, who created a commission to cut costs and commanded its members to “work like tireless bloodhounds,” spending increased every year.

The hounds of DOGE have signed up to work “80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” as the group’s X account puts it, but their results may be similar to Reagan’s. Spending is in the hands of Congress, and as Musk will learn, Congress can’t resist spending more. (Case in point: Congress routinely passes an annual defense spending bill that includes projects the Pentagon doesn’t want.) Even as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle wring their hands about the federal government’s $35 trillion in public debt, federal projects bring dollars to legislators’ homes, and their incentives aren’t likely to change.

Reality may be setting in at DOGE. In a January interview, Musk allowed that his projected 30% cut in the federal budget might not be achievable. “I think that’s like the best-case outcome,” he said. “I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting 1 [trillion].”

Even that objective may be a reach. Social Security, Medicare, defense, and net interest on the national debt consume 59% of the federal budget. If those expenses are considered untouchable, a trillion-dollar cut would have to come out of the $2.8 trillion a year that funds all the other federal programs—Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, the federal judiciary, the Food and Drug Administration, and many more services that taxpayers rely on. Tellingly, DOGE insiders told the New York Times in January that DOGE planned to station recruits for longer stints inside federal agencies—seemingly an acknowledgement that real cost-cutting reform will require a deeper intimacy with the costs being cut.

Musk and Ramaswamy said in their op-ed that their “top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026.” Ostensibly that expiration date was chosen to celebrate DOGE’s work as America celebrates its 250th anniversary. Practically, it’s to leave six months with GOP control of Congress in case its work requires legislation. Given the complexity of government and its deep roots across the country, the DOGE team is going to need every moment.

Chart shows U.S. government outlays by function

Portions of this article were previously published on Fortune.com

This article appears in the February/March 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline "How much can DOGE do? Elon Musk and Donald Trump aim to cut as much as $2 trillion in federal spending. It’ll be even harder than it sounds."

We do not know what exactly Elon Musk is doing to the federal government

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Sat, February 1, 2025 a

Americans don’t know the full extent of what Elon Musk is doing as he embeds alongside President Donald Trump at the top of the federal government.

What we know is that he’s the world’s richest man, the president’s largest campaign benefactor, and a person whose companies have grown fat on government contracts, so he has a greater financial interest in how the government operates than your average naturalized immigrant.
There are clues

With that context in mind, consider this startling passage from a report by CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Phil Mattingly and Tierney Sneed about a standoff between career officials at the Treasury Department and employees of DOGE, the Musk-allied Department of Government Efficiency, which has morphed after the election from the out-of-government advisory panel Trump talked about to a rebranded technology unit inside the White House complex. Mattingly, Polantz and Sneed write:
Musk claims to be reclaiming government for you, the taxpaying voter

“This is the critical battle to restore power to the PEOPLE from the massive unelected bureaucracy!” he wrote on the social media platform he owns, pushing people to rally at events opposing the use of taxpayer dollars to fund NGOs, nonprofits unaffiliated with the government that are supposed to do good works.

Think Catholic Relief Services, the World Food Program and Save the Children. There can be a legitimate debate about whether the US should fund those programs in part because we know, thanks to transparency, that the US government is funding those programs.

But his method of taking over the bureaucracy is much less transparent than the bureaucracy itself.

When Bill Clinton offered buyouts to federal workers, in 1993, for instance, he did so after getting buy-in from Congress. Trump’s administration is banking on a slim majority of Republicans in the House buying in to his plan, assuming they get a chance to have a say.

Musk allies now in the government’s HR office

The New York Times and others reported this week that three former Musk employees have taken top positions at the Office of Personnel Management, the formerly obscure HR department for the federal government. It was OPM that first created a government-wide email system and then blasted it with an offer to millions of federal workers giving them the option to resign with pay until September. The offer caught federal workers off guard and unions and government watchdogs have said it is illegal.


OPM confirmed to me that Amanda Scales, who used to work for Musk’s AI company xAI, is now chief of staff at OPM. Brian Bjelde, whose Linkedin profile still lists him as a SpaceX employee, is now a senior director, and so is Anthony Armstrong, a banker who worked with Musk to take over Twitter.

The New York Times report included other Musk allies in positions at other agencies, including the General Services Administration, which oversees federal real estate. Despite encouraging workers to return to the office, Musk also sees getting rid of government real estate or leases, and dispersing remaining workers throughout the country, as a cost saving technique.
Are people getting fired next?

Trump has twice referred to federal workers being fired if they’re not in offices after a February 6 deadline. “If they don’t agree by February 6 to show up back to work in their office, they will be terminated,” he said during a speech at the White House this week. There’s nothing in the resignation offer about people actively being fired in the near term.

Musk’s actual role is unclear

Wired reported he’s told friends he is sleeping at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the White House grounds. CNN has not confirmed the report, although it is similar to the story he told about his early days at Twitter and Tesla, when he proved his devotion to employees by sleeping at the office or on the factory floor. It’s either the ultimate commitment to working from home or the ultimate commitment to his job.

One outstanding question: Has he taken an oath, like the federal workers he apparently has plans to fire, to uphold the Constitution?
What are Musk’s conflicts of interest?

I asked Walter Shaub, the former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, who has raised warnings about Trump but also criticized Democrats, about the opacity of Musk’s role and why it should concern Americans.

“The Trump administration owes the American people a detailed explanation as to precisely how it hopes to manage conflicts of interest, as well as whether it deems Musk and each of the other participants in DOGE as a volunteer, a special government employee or a regular government employee,” he said in an email.
People are supposed to know about the people who run their government

That’s why Trump’s nominees to lead agencies have to undergo nomination hearings on Capitol Hill and why top officials are supposed to file paperwork with the Office of Government Ethics disclosing their financial interests and pledging to act ethically.

They’re supposed to know how their government is spending money and who is doing the spending. The mass resignation offer that caught everyone off guard was made under authority granted to the OPM director. Trump’s nominee, the venture capitalist Scott Kupor, has not yet been confirmed, so the agency is operating with an acting director.

What’s next?

Musk laid out some ideas in the Wall Street Journal, back in November when he was working with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has left DOGE.

Mass firings? That plan presaged an effort to encourage workers to resign. What comes next, according to that Journal plan, is they will “identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” after which Trump could suspend worker protections to enforce a “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” One wonders how many air traffic controllers is the minimum number required.

Steep spending cuts? They’re hoping to grab new power, with help from the Supreme Court, for the president to simply ignore Congress and not spend money, something called impoundment. They also wanted to cut $500 billion in spending by targeting things like public broadcasting and foreign aid. There’s already evidence of this plan in Trump’s since-rescinded order to halt federal grants.

A hard look at Medicare? Some of the efforts should be welcome to Americans, like a long overdue examination of federal contracting and procurement. But don’t be surprised when it takes a hard look at Medicare spending, despite Trump’s pledge not to cut safety net spending. It’s all written out in the Journal.

What’s not written is a public plan or a list of Musk allies now in the government. That is something everyone should want to take a look at.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

Musk and allies have reportedly seized key HR office - and skipped past officials to send mass resignation email

Ariana Baio

INDEPENDENT UK
Fri, January 31, 2025 

Elon Musk continues to assert his power and influence with President Donald Trump, and a new report details how the tech mogul and his allies have taken “control” of the Office of Personnel Management and skipped past key officials to release an email asking federal workers to resign.

More than 2.3 million government employees were sent an email last week offering buyouts to anyone who voluntarily leaves their job in an effort to significantly reduce the federal workforce.

The style of the email, entitled “Fork in the Road,” mimics that of one Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2022 when he bought the company, now known as X.

Officials within the Office of Personnel Management - an HR-type agency for the government - were reportedly “blindsided” by the memo, believed to be heavily influenced by billionaire Musk.

The Office of Personnel Management is a nonpartisan agency that manages the federal workforce, and would typically be consulted ahead of significant personnel changes. They were not informed of this proposal, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post.

In the weeks since Trump took office, Musk has moved to take control of the office, according to the Post. He visited the office on Friday and put several of his longtime allies in key positions.

Elon Musk has installed several allies in the Office of Personnel Management as he seeks to slash the federal workforce - and Trump pushed for federal workers to resign (via REUTERS)

That includes Anthony Armstrong, who helped Musk buy Twitter, according to the Post. Others include Brian Bjelde from SpaceX and Amanda Scales who worked at a Musk AI firm. The trio are now in leadership positions in the office.

Musk’s team also built the system that sent the email to federal workers - a system that did not exist before Trump took office, the Post noted.

It is the latest signal that Musk’s role in Trump’s new administration reaches far beyond his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency.

DOGE was initially pitched as an advisory committee to function outside of the government and suggest spending cutbacks but through an executive order. Trump replaced the U.S. Digital Service office with DOGE. Musk was also supposed to co-chair that with Vivek Ramaswamy, but now has sole control.

Musk’s role in upending the federal workforce and reshaping it to fall more in line with Trump’s agenda has transformed his advisory role into something much larger.

In turn, some federal employees are skeptical of the buyout offer.

Musk has encountered legal issues with many former employees. A former Tesla executive is suing Musk after the company allowed him to work remotely but then threatened to fire him if he did not relocate

Thousands of former Twitter employees unsuccessfully sued Musk claiming he did not pay at least $500 million in severance after he conducted a mass layoff at the company.

The Office of Personnel Management offer claims to pay workers' salaries through September 30 and says they do not have to return to work. However, questions remain on whether the offer will hold up to scrutiny.

The Independent has asked the Office of Personnel Management for comment.

Elon Musk Shuts Out Senior Government Workers in Latest DOGE Takeover

Emell Derra Adolphus
Fri, January 31, 2025


CHIP SOMODEVILLA / POOL/AFP via Getty Images

DOGE director Elon Musk has shut out senior government workers and seized control of key workflows in the Office of Personnel Management, causing major security concerns, a source told Reuters.

The Office of Personnel Management functions as the government’s human resources agency, managing policies, payments, recruitment, and labor relations.

Government aides working for the billionaire Tesla CEO and Trump sidekick have reportedly taken over the office’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration database, which contains the personal data of millions of federal employees, two agency officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

Musk has suggested that he could cut “at least $2 trillion” from U.S. government spending by eliminating “waste” and redundancy. President Donald Trump has also pledged to shrink the government, offering buyouts to all federal employees who opt to leave their jobs by Feb. 6.

The merits of such an offering have been called into question by legal experts. As one attorney told NPR, the offer is “not based on any law or regulation or anything really other than an idea they cooked up to get federal employees out of the government.”

But that hasn’t stopped Trump administration officials from moving to freeze out employees, with some Office of Personnel Management workers fearing Musk is aiming to replace them with Trump loyalists.

Trump Broke the Federal Email System and Government Employees Got Blasted With Astonishingly Vulgar Messages

Joe Wilkins
Fri, January 31, 2025

Email Empowerment

Turns out that putting underqualified kids in charge of the federal government's HR agency wasn't the smartest move. Last night, an exploit in the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) new home-cooked email server seems to have made it possible for anyone with an email address to blast messages to vast numbers of federal employees.

As a result, over 13,000 employees with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found their inboxes bombarded with spam and messages from vulgar trolls. Some users signed the NOAA up for newsletters from entities like the Church of Scientology, or the Perfect Jean — "Welcome to Jean Perfection," a screenshot reads. One particularly vulgar email offered pointers on Trump's alleged performance at a sexual act. An "Important Weather Alert" warned that the next four years have a 99 percent chance of fecal showers. "Aren't you tired of working for a complete c***?" asked one sender. A missive from a sender identified as "Craig" simply reads "yo."

Ken Klippenstein, the national security reporter who revealed the breach, once again took the opportunity to plug his infamous newsletter with the subject line: "urgent, time sensitive."

If you feel this paints a pretty grim picture of the state of our government agencies, you're not alone. "Goes to show you how fast this [new comms system] was cobbled together," one NOAA employee told Ken Klippenstein. "No security or screening on this address."

Spam of God

The whole thing apparently stems from an overhaul at the OPM led by oligarch-in-chief Elon Musk. On Tuesday, Wired reported that Musk had been given free reign to replace the agency's high-level staff with lackeys from his previous ventures.

Those included a 21-year-old who had previously worked for Peter Thiel, and a summer intern from Neuralink who just graduated high school. It also included Amanda Scales — a former xAI HR staffer who is reportedly in place as the OPM's new chief of staff.

Scales is allegedly implementing what some have called a hostile takeover of the OPM, axing the Chief Information Officer Melvin Brown II for refusing to implement the new regime's in-house email server. Brown evidently made the right call, as the new system — on top of all the aforementioned drama — was immediately hit with a class-action lawsuit for failing to pass Bush-era cyber security checks.

All this server drama is important, as it's reportedly key in DOGE's goal of gathering information on every government employee. Tuesday's much-reported "fork in the road" email memos came from this unsecured server, which unintentionally revealed the involvement of two non-government individuals, both heavily involved in Project 2025.

As Trump's acolytes look to gut the federal government and install their own yes men, the drama swirling around this email server will have a lot to reveal about the new administration's unprecedented strategy.

More on email leaks: In Leaked Email, Elon Musk Admits Defeat on Twitter



Opinion

Trump Change Causes Flood of Crude Spam Emails to Federal Workers

Malcolm Ferguson
Fri, January 31, 2025 
THE NEW REPUBLIC




The Trump administration’s changes to its email settings has federal employees getting endlessly spammed with vulgar content.

When Trump took office, he changed the email system so that every single federal worker could be contacted with one email. People are taking advantage of that. According to online reports, all 13,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were flooded with spam emails on Thursday.

“I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks. From a Scientology confirmation email to an Important Weather Alert that the next 4 years has a 99% chance of shit showers,” one federal worker wrote on the r/fednews subreddit. “I guess this is what happens when you plug in an unsecured server.”

“Aren’t you tired of working for a complete cunt?” one of the NOAA emails read. “TRUMP TRIED TO SUCK MY COCK,” said another. The email with the subject “Important Weather Alert” read, “The next 4 years has a 99% chance of shit showers. Our president is a retard and his VP is a f—. We’re cooked. Please reply.”

Not everyone is using this basic lack of security oversight for crassness.

“I just sent this email to all 13,000 federal employees of the NOAA lol,” said journalist Ken Klippenstein, sharing an email asking federal workers to subscribe to his newsletter. “The Trump administration’s changes to their communications system made it so literally anyone can blast messages out to the entire agency.”

Trump has yet to comment on the spam emails.

OPM sued over privacy concerns with new government-wide email system

Rebecca Beitsch

THE HILL
Tue, January 28, 2025

Two federal employees are suing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to block the agency from creating a new email distribution system — an action that comes as the information will reportedly be directed to a former staffer to Elon Musk now at the agency.

The suit, launched by two anonymous federal employees, ties together two events that have alarmed members of the federal workforce and prompted privacy concerns.

That includes an unusual email from OPM last Thursday reviewed by The Hill said the agency was testing “a new capability” to reach all federal employees — a departure from staffers typically being contacted directly by their agency’s human resources department.

Also cited in the suit is an anonymous Reddit post Monday from someone purporting to be an OPM employee, saying a new server was installed at their office after a career employee refused to set up a direct line of communication to all federal employees.

According to the post, instructions have been given to share responses to the email to OPM chief of staff Amanda Scales, a former employee at Musk’s AI company.

Federal agencies have separately been directed to send Scales a list of all employees still on their one-year probationary status, and therefore easier to remove from government.

The suit says the actions violate the E-Government Act of 2002, which requires a Privacy Impact Assessment before pushing ahead with creation of databases that store personally identifiable information.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a non-profit law firm, noted that OPM has been hacked before and has a duty to protect employees’ information.

“Because they did that without any indications to the public of how this thing was being managed — they can’t do that for security reasons. They can’t do that because they have not given anybody any reason to believe that this server is secure….that this server is storing this information in the proper format that would prevent it from being hacked,” he said.

OPM declined to comment on the lawsuit.

McClanahan noted that the emails appear to be an effort to create a master list of federal government employees, as “System of Records Notices” are typically managed by each department.

“I think part of the reason — and this is just my own speculation — that they’re doing this is to try and create that database. And they’re trying to sort of create it by smushing together all these other databases and telling everyone who receives the email to respond,” he said.

A Friday email from OPM instructed employees to respond “yes” to test messages to confirm they can be reached by the agency.

The involvement of Scales comes as Musk, her former employer, has been tapped to lead the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory group focused on slashing the size of the federal workforce and budget.

DOGE as well as OPM have been tapped to form “a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition” — a move detailed in an order from Trump to institute a federal hiring freeze.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Up next

Elon Musk Shuts Out Senior Government Workers in Latest DOGE Takeover

Emell Derra Adolphus

Fri, January 31, 2025 at 9:22 PM MST·1 min read

40

CHIP SOMODEVILLA / POOL/AFP via Getty Images

DOGE director Elon Musk has shut out senior government workers and seized control of key workflows in the Office of Personnel Management, causing major security concerns, a source told Reuters.

The Office of Personnel Management functions as the government’s human resources agency, managing policies, payments, recruitment, and labor relations.

Government aides working for the billionaire Tesla CEO and Trump sidekick have reportedly taken over the office’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration database, which contains the personal data of millions of federal employees, two agency officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

Musk has suggested that he could cut “at least $2 trillion” from U.S. government spending by eliminating “waste” and redundancy. President Donald Trump has also pledged to shrink the government, offering buyouts to all federal employees who opt to leave their jobs by Feb. 6.

The merits of such an offering have been called into question by legal experts. As one attorney told NPR, the offer is “not based on any law or regulation or anything really other than an idea they cooked up to get federal employees out of the government.”

AMERIKA'S CHECK BOOK!

Musk’s Lackeys Seize Control of Social Security Check System

Liam Archacki
Sat, February 1, 2025 

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team have reportedly gained full access to the federal payment system, which contains sensitive personal information on millions of Americans, according to a report.

Access to the system—which is used to distribute Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments across the entire government—was granted by President Donald Trump’s freshly confirmed treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, three sources told The New York Times.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Musk and his lieutenants have rapidly seized control of key government workflows under the purported goal of trying to cut spending.

On Friday, news broke that Musk’s team had taken over key workflows in the Office of Personnel Management (the government’s human resources agency), shutting out senior officials in the process.

Musk’s request for access to the federal payment system was opposed by a career treasury official, David Lebryk, who was put on leave before abruptly retiring on Friday, the Times reported.

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the situation.

In the early hours of Saturday, before the Times’ report, Musk suggested he was seeking to gain access to the system because of concerns about fraudulent payments.

“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,” he wrote on X. “They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

Musk did not provide any evidence for his claim.

Former officials at the treasury told the Times that individual federal agencies were responsible for ensuring that payments were above board. The agencies submit payments to the treasury, which in turn handles their disbursement.

During the 2023 fiscal year, the system paid out more than $5 trillion, according to the Times.

Musk’s efforts to gain access to the system had set off alarm bells for Democrat lawmakers, including Oregon senator Ron Wyden, who is on the Senate Finance Committee.

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” he wrote in a letter to Bessent on Friday. “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.”



After it was reported that Musk had gained access to the system, Wyden took to social media to express his concerns.

“Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system,” he wrote on Bluesky. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it.”

Musk, a tech billionaire, is the owner of Tesla and X. After backing Trump’s campaign for president, Musk was named to lead the cost-cutting initiative within Trump’s new administration.

Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system

Story by Jeff Stein

 • FEB 1, 2025

Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues.

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment.

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them.

Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. DOGE is now housed in a White House office formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service but now called the U.S. DOGE Service and has broad visibility into technology across the government.

The New York Times was first to report that Musk’s deputies had gained control of the systems.

Democrats have strongly criticized the idea of giving Musk surrogates access to the payment systems.

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) said in a letter to Bessent on Friday. “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.”

Senator warns of national security risks after Elon Musk's DOGE granted 'full access' to sensitive Treasury systems

Zack Whittaker
Sat, February 1, 2025
TECH CRUNCH

A senior U.S. lawmaker says representatives of Elon Musk were granted "full access" to a U.S. Treasury payments system used to disperse trillions of dollars to Americans each year, and warned that Musk's access to the system poses a "national security risk."

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a post on Bluesky on Saturday that sources told his office Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk's team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, authorization to access the highly sensitive Treasury system on Friday. The authorization comes following a standoff earlier in the week, in which the Treasury's highest-ranking career official left the department following requests from Musk's team for access to the system.

“Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,” wrote Wyden in the post, referring to DOGE's access.

The New York Times also reported that Bessent granted DOGE access to the Treasury's payment system on Friday. One of the DOGE representatives granted access is said to be Tom Krause, the chief executive of Cloud Software Group, which owns Citrix and several other companies. Krause did not return TechCrunch's request for comment. A spokesperson for the Treasury did not comment when emailed Saturday.

This is the latest effort by Musk and his associates to take over the inner workings of the U.S. federal government following President Trump's return to office on January 20. Following his inauguration, Trump immediately ordered Musk to begin making widespread cuts to federal government spending.

The system run by the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service controls the disbursements of around $6 trillion in federal funds to American households, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, and payments to U.S. federal employees and contractors, according to a letter written by Wyden and sent to Bessent a day earlier. Access to the payments system was historically limited to a few staff because it contains personal information about millions of Americans who receive payments from the federal government, per the Times.

According to Wyden's letter, the payments system "simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy."

In his letter, Wyden said he was concerned that Musk's extensive business operations in China "endangers U.S. cybersecurity" and creates conflicts of interest that "make his access to these systems a national security risk."

Last year, the Biden administration blamed China for a series of intrusions targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, the theft of senior American officials' phone records during breaches of several U.S. phone and internet giants, and a breach of the Treasury's own systems late last year. Wyden, also a long-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was "unusual to be granting access to sensitive systems to an individual with such significant business interests in China."

Several other federal departments are under scrutiny by DOGE, including the federal government's own human resources department, known as the Office of Personnel Management.

Reuters reported on Friday that Musk's representatives locked out career civil servants from computer systems, which contain the personal data and human resources files of millions of federal employees. The OPM was hacked in 2015, which the U.S. government later attributed to China, resulting in the theft of personnel records on more than 22 million U.S. government employees, including staff with security clearances.

Opinion

Elon Musk Is Trying to Get Control of Key Payment System—at Any Cost

Hafiz Rashid
Fri, January 31, 2025 




A top-ranking official in the U.S. Department of the Treasury is resigning after a fight with Elon Musk over a sensitive payment system.

The Washington Post reports that David Lebryk, who has worked in the department for decades and is its longest-serving career official, will depart soon, after conflicting with Musk’s deputies over access to the government’s payment system used to distribute trillions of dollars every year. Until Scott Bessent’s confirmation as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk served as acting head of the department.

Musk’s people at his “Department of Government Efficiency” have sought access to the system since the election, the Post reports, and their requests continued after Donald Trump’s inauguration. However, the Treasury’s payment systems have usually only been accessed by a small number of career officials.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service operates the systems, controlling $6 trillion of money disbursement around the country. Tens, and possibly hundreds, of millions of people rely on the systems, which distribute Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, grants, and tax refunds, as well as thousands of other things.

Lebryk joined the department in 1989 as an intern, and has worked for three decades under 11 different treasury secretaries. His departure at this time doesn’t bode well, especially since he served in the previous Trump administration and was praised by Trump’s current deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, in 2023.

“I could not, to this day, tell you his politics,” said Faulkender, who worked with Lebryk in sending out stimulus payments during the Covid-19 pandemic, an effort Lebryk led. “He always seemed to be relaxed and under control.”

It appears that Musk, while upending the lives of federal workers, is now causing chaos with the U.S. government’s money flow. If federal officials who have served for decades under different presidents, including Trump, see a need to quit, that’s not a good sign for the country.


Top Treasury official retires over DOGE request for access to payment systems

Alex Gangitano
Fri, January 31, 2025 

THE HILL

David Lebryk, a top Treasury Department nonpolitical career official, retired Friday after clashing with Elon Musk allies over government payment systems, a source familiar with the matter told The Hill on condition of anonymity.

The Washington Post first reported on Lebryk’s departure, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Upon his inauguration, President Trump had appointed Lebryk acting Treasury secretary while nominee Scott Bessent was waiting to be confirmed.

Lebryk’s retirement follows a dispute over a request from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk oversees, for access to the payment system that Treasury officials use to disburse funds.

The Post reported that a small number of career officials at Treasury have control over the systems, which are run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Lebryk was previously first commissioner of the bureau.

The systems control $6 trillion annually, distributed as Social Security, Medicare, salaries for federal workers, payments to government contractors, payments to grant recipients and tax refunds.

Lebryk served in the Treasury Department for three decades and was appointed the fiscal assistant secretary in 2014, which is the most senior career position at the agency.

The Treasury Department and DOGE did not respond to a request for comment Lebryk’s retirement.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Elon Musk’s DOGE commission gains access to sensitive Treasury payment systems: AP sources

The Associated Press
Sat, February 1, 2025 

The Department of Government Efficiency, run by President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has gained access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The move by DOGE, a Trump administration task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, means it could have wide leeway to access important taxpayer data, among other things.

The New York Times first reported the news of the group’s access of the massive federal payment system. The two people who spoke to The Associated Press spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.


The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon, on Friday sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concern that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.”

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” Wyden said.

Read: A body washes up on shore at Indian Harbour Beach, according to police

The news also comes after Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned from his position at Treasury after more than 30 years of service. The Washington Post on Friday reported that Lebryk resigned his position after Musk and his DOGE organization requested access to sensitive Treasury data.

“The Fiscal Service performs some of the most vital functions in government,” Lebryk said in a letter to Treasury employees sent out Friday. “Our work may be unknown to most of the public, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t exceptionally important. I am grateful for having been able to work alongside some of the nation’s best and most talented operations staff.”

The letter did not mention a DOGE request to access Treasury payments.

Musk on Saturday responded to a post on his social media platform X about the departure of Lebryk: “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.”

Read: Arrest made in home invasion where victim was left severely battered inside their vehicle

He did not provide proof of this claim.

DOGE was originally headed by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who jointly vowed to cut billions from the federal budget and usher in “mass headcount reductions across the federal bureaucracy.”

Ramaswamy has since left DOGE as he mulls a run for governor of Ohio.

Elon Musk is reportedly taking control of the inner workings of US government agencies

Sean O'Kane
Fri, January 31, 2025
TECHCRUNCH



People working for, or with, Elon Musk are reportedly taking over the inner workings of multiple government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department, and the General Services Administration.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the highest-ranking career official at Treasury is leaving the department after "a clash" with people working for Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over "access to sensitive payment systems," citing three unnamed sources.

The DOGE officials have been asking for access to the system -- which controls the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to programs like Social Security and Medicare -- since after the election in November. The Trump administration has been looking for ways to stop the flow of federal money appropriated by Congress, including hastily ordering a confusing spending freeze, which experts say violates the Constitution.

Reuters also reported Friday that Musk aides have "locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees," citing two unnamed agency officials. Leaked documents obtained by Wired show Musk's staff have taken over the General Services Administration, a government agency that manages federal offices and technology.


Across the government, tech workers are being grilled and subjected to code reviews by Musk aides, Wired reported Thursday. Musk and his team also appear to have been involved in a recent government-wide email offering employees the chance to resign.

Musk's disruption of the federal government so far tracks closely to the chaotic days following his takeover of Twitter, as detailed by books like "Character Limit" and other reporting from the time.

It represents an unprecedented power grab within the U.S. government, and one that directly contradicts the original stated purpose of DOGE. When Donald Trump first announced it in November after he won the election, the idea was to set up DOGE as an entity outside the federal government that would make recommendations on where to cut spending.

That's not what happened.

After his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that renamed the U.S. Digital Service to the "U.S. DOGE service," meaning Musk is now working inside the government. He reportedly has an office in the West Wing of the White House, but is also apparently sleeping at the DOGE office, according to Wired.

This article has been updated to include a new report by Wired that Elon Musk's staff have also infiltrated the General Service Administration.