World’s Richest Man access U.S. Government Payment System
The U.S. government has granted Elon Musk and his government efficiency team access to the Treasury Department’s payment system.
President Donald Trump has given Musk, the chair of the recently established Department of Government Efficiency, the responsibility of exposing government waste and fraud.
Musk has also requested access to the system that Treasury uses to distribute federal funds. Career Treasury official David Lebryk, who was put on leave this week and later retired, resisted his efforts.
According to the New York Times, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent authorized Musk’s team on Friday. Millions of Americans who receive Social Security benefits, tax refunds, and other government funds have their personal information stored in the system that distributes over $6 trillion in payments annually on behalf of federal agencies.
Democrat Senator Ron Wyden seemed to reaffirm that Musk’s team has access. ‘My office has been informed by sources that DOGE has been given *complete* access to this system by Treasury Secretary Bessent.’
Wyden, the leading Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote on Saturday, that ” politically motivated meddling” in the payment system “risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” Wyden wrote in a letter to Bessent on Friday.
The Musk-led department is not a federal department or an independent entity but a group formed at Trump’s command and operating from the White House.

