Musk Claims Doge Found Lax Treasury Payment Controls

Elon Musk suggested on Saturday that his government efficiency group’s effort to gain greater control over the Treasury Department's disbursement of trillions of dollars in payments to Americans was about rooting out fraud or illicit payments.

Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Donald Trump, responded on X to a post about the sudden departure of Treasury’s top career official David Lebryk on Friday after he reportedly clashed with Musk-affiliated officials over whether to hand over access to Treasury’s sensitive payment system.

“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,” Musk wrote, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency. “They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

Musk did not offer any evidence for his claim that Treasury instructed employees to approve payments to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had granted DOGE representatives full access to the federal payment system, citing people familiar with the change.

A Treasury Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did a White House spokesperson for Musk’s DOGE group.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service, which operates Treasury's payment system, has a payments integrity office tasked with identifying, preventing and recovering fraud and improper payments. According to Treasury, those efforts have prevented improper payments totaling nearly $155 million and have aided in the recovery of nearly $350 million.

"BFS is studiously apolitical," said Lily Batchelder, who served as a Treasury secretary for tax policy during the Biden administration. "It is deeply concerning that political appointees in the White House would be attempting to interfere with people’s Social Security benefits and tax refunds."

Democrats have criticized efforts by Trump political appointees and Musk’s DOGE to assert more control over a federal payments system that has long been run by nonpolitical career employees.

“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, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Bessent on Friday evening.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, similarly called for a congressional investigation.

The federal government has safeguards that are meant to prevent incorrect payments. For example, a Do Not Pay portal allows agencies to verify whether a recipient is dead, blacklisted from government contracting, sanctioned, incarcerated or otherwise ineligible.

During the Biden administration, Treasury touted new efforts to use artificial intelligence to detect fraud and improper payments. Treasury said in October that the effort had prevented and recovered more than $4 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.

Yet improper payments in federal programs have been a perennial problem that has long drawn the concern of government watchdogs and congressional lawmakers. Improper payments across the government spiked in recent years when Congress approved massive new relief programs to help Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Government Accountability Office estimated last year that the federal government could be losing between $233 billion and $521 billion each year due to fraud.

Federal agencies reported $236 billion in improper payments in the 2024 fiscal year. The bulk came from Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, pandemic relief loans to small businesses, Treasury’s earned income tax credit, and Social Security payments.