Ex Treasury Secretaries Issue Stark Warning Against DOGE's 'Financial Conflicts of Interest': 'Corrosive to Our Democracy'

Multiple former Treasury secretaries published a letter warning the nation about the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, stating that DOGE's access to the nation's payment system could put highly confidential data at risk.

Robert E. Rubin, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner, Jacob J. Lew and Janet L. Yellen, all former Treasury secretaries who served under Democratic administrations, published a joint op-ed in the New York Times on Monday.

The piece, titled "Our Democracy Is Under Siege," warns that recent actions taken by DOGE may severely impact the constitutional precedent under which the US government operates.

"While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming," they wrote.

"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."

On Thursday, a federal judge signed an order under which two DOGE staffers were to receive "read-only" access to sensitive data within the Treasury Department.

"The nation's payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants," the secretaries wrote. "In recent days, that norm has been upended, and the roles of these nonpartisan officials have been compromised by political actors" from DOGE.

Many have voiced concerns about the role of Musk, an unelected private citizen, within the government.

"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," continued the former secretaries.

"They lack training and experience to handle private, personal data — like Social Security numbers and bank account information. Their power subjects America's payments system and the highly sensitive data within it to the risk of exposure, potentially to our adversaries. And our critical infrastructure is at risk of failure if the code that underwrites it is not handled with due care."