Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his pro-austerity Department of Government Efficiency tried to access key systems responsible for paying out the federal government’s salaries and bills, pushing a high-ranking career civil servant to quit the Treasury Department.
According to The Washington Post, David Lebryk, the current deputy secretary of the Treasury Department, is expected to leave the agency after decades of nonpolitical service.
Sources told the Post that Lebryk pushed back on attempts by Musk surrogates to access the nation’s system for doling out paychecks, Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds and federal contracts.
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which administers the payment systems, says it disbursed $5.4 trillion across 1.3 billion payments in fiscal year 2023. It’s unclear what Musk’s office wanted to accomplish by gaining access to the system, but it represents an escalation in his attempt to take hold of the federal government.
Though the legality of Musk’s efforts to access the systems is unclear, President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order authorizing the DOGE scheme instructed federal agencies to give the X owner’s group “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”
Earlier this week, Trump’s heads of the budget and personnel management offices made what critics say are drastic and even illegal attempts to shave down the bureaucracy.
On Monday, Matthew Vaeth, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo freezing nearly all federal grants and loans and paralyzing essential services like Medicaid. The White House later rescinded that order after a judge blocked it.
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