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Five former Treasury Secretaries have published an open letter entitled "Our Democracy is Under Siege," criticizing the actions of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump.
Knewz.com has learned that the letter came days after DOGE sought to gain access to the Department of Treasury payment system to stop money from going into the United States Agency for International Development.
The letter, which has been signed by former Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner, Jacob J. Lew, and Janet L. Yellen, criticizes what they describe as “arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments.”
Led by Musk and a group of engineers, DOGE is responsible for scanning the federal government for areas where it can identify and remove what it deems as unnecessary government expenditures.
As one of their first projects, the department just shuttered the civilian foreign aid and development assistance agency USAID, slashing its workforce from 10,000 to less than 300, according to reports.
Protests have already erupted against the Musk-led DOGE and their downsizing of government employees at a concerning rate.
While DOGE attempted to stop money from going into USAID by accessing the Department of Treasury payment system, they had originally assured federal lawmakers in a letter that they only intended "to review the integrity of the payments and had “read-only access” to the system as part of an audit process."
At the same time, DOGE reportedly gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees, as part of what reports mention is "a broader effort to take control" over the Office of Personnel Management.
The letter from the Treasury Secretaries of former Democratic administrations points this out and says that the handling of sensitive information by "political actors from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency" risks the said information to "exposure, potentially to our adversaries."
"These political actors have not been subject to the same rigorous ethics rules as civil servants, and one has explicitly retained his role in a private company, creating at best the appearance of financial conflicts of interest. They lack training and experience to handle private, personal data — like Social Security numbers and bank account information," the letter further pointed out.
"That is why a federal judge this past weekend blocked, at least temporarily, these individuals from the Treasury’s payments system, noting the risk of 'irreparable harm.'"
The letter, which was published in the Opinion column of The New York Times on Monday, February 10, added:
"While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming. We take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy."
It was reported earlier that federal employees at the Labor Department are "racing" to prevent DOGE from "gaining access to sensitive computer systems, following similar efforts at USAID and the Office of Personnel Management."
"Government employee unions and labor groups filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Wednesday contending that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will attempt to illegally gain access to Labor Department systems containing sensitive information and unlawfully fire career personnel," a report from POLITICO mentioned.
Citing the recent efforts made by DOGE to potentially interfere with the federal fund disbursement system of the Treasury Department, the former secretaries wrote that people "often rely on these funds for survival, making any risk of their cutoff or delay existential."
"Social Security checks arrive each month. Veterans receive their benefits. Medicare providers are reimbursed. Federal workers, members of the military and businesses that provide goods and services to the government are all paid on time and in full. Holders of outstanding federal debt receive interest payments," they added.
"Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain," the letter concluded.
It has been reported that the Musk-led department could next turn its sights on the Social Security Administration, an agency that provides benefits to the elderly and disabled.