The New York Times has reported that “Trump administration appointees and allies of Elon Musk” requested that career officials use the [Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS)] payment systems to freeze federal payments, prior to political appointees gaining access. [6] For the first time in decades, the Secretary of the Treasury has delegated the responsibilities of overseeing these payment systems to a political official rather than a nonpartisan career civil servant with long expertise and experience in these matters, even while that political official maintains his role as a private company CEO. [7]
DOGE access to or control over BFS systems raises serious concerns, including the risk that payments will be illegally stopped based on Musk’s own or the Trump Administration’s political or policy preferences; the possibility of severe cybersecurity and privacy breaches; and the potential that payments could be inadvertently delayed to millions of individuals, including retirees and veterans, to organizations and businesses providing public services on behalf of the federal government, as well as to states, localities, territories, and tribal nations for providing services like Medicaid and transportation.
As this process makes clear, BFS staff do not independently make determinations of eligibility for payments (a responsibility performed by agencies with respect to the specific laws and regulations governing their programs), but instead ensure that requested payments are successfully and securely processed. BFS career officials execute an important but operational role: as noted above, if the payment information BFS receives from an agency is certified in its proper form, then BFS makes the payment.
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