Warren, Wyden Probe Secretary Bessent on DOGE Access to Sensitive Personal Information in Treasury Payment Systems
“We seek information on the Department’s efforts to ensure that such a breach has been repaired and never occurs again.”
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent requesting information on the extent to which the Treasury Department provided two Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees with improper access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s (BFS) payment systems in early 2025, according to recent reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
“Treasury’s failure to control access to these systems presented - and may still present - unacceptable risks: BFS handles nearly 90% of all federal payments, facilitates over 1.2 billion transactions per year, and houses a slew of Americans’ sensitive personal information,” wrote the Ranking Members. “Any disruption of the system or its contents could have catastrophic consequences for the economy.”
“Access to Treasury payment systems is highly controlled – and for good reason. Treasury’s systems contain Americans’ sensitive payment information and most federal agencies use BFS systems to process payments, making ‘the integrity and security of these systems … critical to the nation’s economy,’” continued the Ranking Members.
“Yet according to GAO, the Treasury Department – under your leadership – failed to ensure that a DOGE employee agreed to follow Treasury’s IT security rules and was unable to detect improper payment information transmissions,” wrote the Ranking Members. “[N]ot only could this employee view Treasury’s sensitive financial information, but for a short period of time, they also had the ability to delete information and introduce inaccuracies into the system.”
“Treasury provided a separate DOGE employee with ‘over the shoulder access’ to BFS systems. Though this employee did not have the ability to access systems themselves, they could request that bureau staff provide any payment system data of interest,” wrote the Ranking Members.
They concluded requesting written responses so that Congress can fully understand the extent of DOGE’s improper access to federal payment systems and any threats to the systems posed by this improper access.
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