President Donald Trump on Monday defended Elon Musk getting access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, while asserting that Musk cannot use the nation’s de-facto paycheck without approval.
“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” Trump said in the Oval Office after he signed several unrelated executive orders. “And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate; where not appropriate, we won’t. But he reports in and he — it’s something that he feels very strongly about.”
Musk and his allies at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have reportedly gotten access to computer systems at several federal departments, including a Treasury Department system that pays almost all of the United States’ bills.
While various federal payments, grants, and loans go out via agencies and departments, the Treasury Department sends the actual money. It distributed $5.4 trillion in federal payments in the last fiscal year — 88% of all payments, 97% of which were done electronically. Critics fear Musk and his DOGE team getting direct access to the system — which few people have access to — means he could unilaterally cut off payments to any programs he or President Trump do not approve of, even though the vast majority of federal payments, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are required under law.
For his part, Musk has in the past called for cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget, and reportedly said he believes the government is sending out money to agencies or people who do not deserve the money or do not exist — something Trump appeared to echo.
“They’re finding tremendous waste — really waste, more than anything else,” the president said without providing specifics. “Probably fraud and abuse can be added to it, the more standard waste, fraud and abuse. But they’re finding tremendous amounts of really bad things, bad spending.”
Trump also said his administration would step in if Musk faces some conflicts of interest, although he did not go into further detail.
“He’s running, obviously, a big company,” Trump said about Musk, whose SpaceX company has billions of dollars in government contracts. “If there’s a conflict, then we won’t let him get near it.”