Democratic lawmakers are frustrated with Elon Musk’s government takeover, and they’re not afraid to show it.
Reps. Gwen Moore and Judy Chu barged into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on Wednesday to confront him about the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s federal payment system.
The lawmakers forced their way into Johnson’s office shortly after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived to discuss his tax agenda with the speaker.
“I am here to DEMAND answers from Speaker Johnson at his meeting with Scott Bessent regarding sensitive taxpayer information being handed over to an unelected billionaire donor,” Moore wrote in a post on X.
Bessent granted Musk’s DOGE minions access to the Treasury’s payments system, which contains the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans, as part of a bid to aid Musk’s dismantling of the federal government.
A 25-year-old engineer under Musk’s wing reportedly has the ability to alter the code behind the vast majority of payments the federal government makes to citizens, including Social Security checks and tax returns. The Treasury Department maintained publicly Tuesday that DOGE’s access was limited to “read-only.”
“We were trying to make the point that if we were at the airport, the people who are selling pretzels and cookies would have to have an FBI clearance for them to be able to go beyond the gate area,” Moore told reporters. “This is unprecedented. It is illegal.”
“There is a law that says that nobody other than Treasury officials can get the private tax information of Americans in this country,” Chu added. “Where’s the outrage now that this billionaire can go in and get the private tax information just on a whim and do whatever he wants with that information?”
The representatives said Johnson told them that he was trying to understand the situation himself.
“He said he’s trying to find out. So I said that that was very distressing to me, that even you don’t know, and you’re the Speaker of the House and you have no idea what is happening,” Moore said.
Chu confirmed that Bessent was not in the room when they spoke with Johnson.
Johnson told the two lawmakers that there would be an oversight hearing into the DOGE takeover next week, they said.
“But next week?” Chu said. “How much could be stolen in that period of time? I think a lot.”
David Lebyrk, the Treasury’s highest-ranking career official, resigned last week after clashing with DOGE staffers over access to the sensitive federal payment system.
Musk previously accused career Treasury officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day” by approving payments that he described as “fraudulent” because they “do not match the funding laws passed by Congress.”
“This needs to stop NOW,” he said on his social media platform X.
