Musk's DOGE group has access to the federal payments system. What does that mean?

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

When the U.S. government cuts a check, a payment for a contractor, tax refund, Social Security payment, it generally comes from an office within the U.S. Treasury Department that distributes trillions of dollars per year. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service oversees a payment system known as the nation’s checkbook. Now the president’s ally, Elon Musk, has access to that system. So what can Musk and his entity, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, do? Natasha Sarin has been watching all this from the outside. She served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the Biden administration. Welcome to the program.

NATASHA SARIN: Thanks for having me.

INSKEEP: What’s in the database, so far as you know?

SARIN: So the payment system, as you’re describing, is basically an accounts payable department, right? So it’s sending money from the federal government where it’s supposed to go - to households, for example, people getting Social Security benefits, to contractors doing work for the government. And to do that, it means that the system has incredibly sensitive personal information about every American. It has all your Social Security numbers, all the bank account information, all in this infrastructure.

INSKEEP: Bank account information. If I have direct deposit, my bank account is in there. And I’m also just thinking, Elon Musk is a government contractor through the agency X. So are checks being cut to Elon Musk through the same payment system that Mr. Musk now has access to?

SARIN: Checks are being cut to all contractors through the - for the government. Eighty-eight percent of the government’s sort of dollars that are going out the door are coming through the Bureau of Fiscal Service. And so this is $5 trillion of payments every year. Over one trillion payments are routed through this system. I was at Treasury for two years. I worked on issues related to payments, like tax credits.

I was a political appointee, and I was nowhere near this data despite my security clearance. And that’s, like, how it should be. The Bureau of Fiscal Service, this isn’t a policy job with political appointees. It’s incredibly mechanical. It’s just literally telling the bureau who gets money and the bureau paying out the money. So there’s no reason for anyone to have access to this incredibly sensitive information.

INSKEEP: Wall Street Journal reports that Musk’s people have read-only access, like a document that you can’t edit. Is that reassuring?

SARIN: Not really. I mean, I’ve been racking my brain for days, and I can’t come up with a legitimate reason why Elon Musk and DOGE should have access in any form to this infrastructure. And the reason that you saw that sort of statement about read-only come out is because of the obvious concern that in the very extreme case, what you’re talking about here, is that Elon Musk and DOGE can be in charge of deciding what programs they want to keep paying out, and what Social Security beneficiaries should keep getting their benefits, 'cause they have access to the infrastructure. You just turn off certain types of payments. Obviously, the treasury wants to be...

INSKEEP: Can I just stop for a second? 'Cause time is short.

SARIN: Yeah.

INSKEEP: I mean, Anthony Scaramucci, sometime friend of Trump, sometime critic of Trump, looked at this and said, well, actually, if they’re just looking around to try to find fraudulent payments, and there certainly are some among trillions of dollars, is that a legitimate use of this database?

SARIN: So I am very sympathetic with the idea that we need to do more about fraud. GAO estimates that 3% of government payments that are paid out each year are fraudulent - totally reasonable thing to do. That’s, like, not what this infrastructure is for. Both legally, that’s kind of the agency’s job to figure out as they have different programs, like what types of filters they do to put in fraud.

And also, because just as a matter of volume, when you’re talking about trillions of dollars of payments that are coming from all different areas and facets of the government, this, like, isn’t the right vehicle, and this structure isn’t the right structure to be able to look at that type of fraud or inefficiency.

INSKEEP: In about 10 seconds, could somebody with full access to this database cancel payments for anybody that doesn’t, I don’t know, salute Donald Trump?

SARIN: I think there are legitimate concerns like that one, and I - we kind of have to wait and watch and see how this pans out, but I’m very worried.

INSKEEP: Natasha Sarin was deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the Biden administration. Thanks for your insights. Really appreciate it.

SARIN: Thanks for having me.

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