U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was interviewed Thursday by Bloomberg Radio’s Saleha Mohsin in the historic Cash Room in the Treasury Building, which is just a few hundred yards from the White House. (A 761-foot subterranean tunnel connects the two buildings.)
Note: The Cash Room opened in the Treasury Building in 1869 for the transaction of the government’s financial business. It was known as a “banker’s bank,” supplying commercial banks with coins and currency from Treasury vaults.
Bessent was asked to address the widespread concern about the Elon Musk-led DOGE team’s access to sensitive Treasury payments systems. “Are you worried at all,” Mohsin asked, “about that access and that tinkering of the payment systems could affect the Treasury’s market or cause any disruption?”
Bessent replied: “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, when you say the DOGE Team, these are Treasury employees. Two Treasury employees, one of whom I personally interviewed in his final round. There is no tinkering with the system.”
Bessent added of the two Treasury employees: “They are on read-only, they are looking, they can make no changes. It’s an operational program to suggest improvements.” He added: “This is two employees who are working with a group of longstanding employees.”
When asked if these employees ever “at any point” had access to make changes, Bessent replied, “Absolutely not. This is no different than you would have at a private company. And by the way, the ability to change the system sits over at the Federal Reserve. So, it doesn’t even lie in this building.” He added, “We don’t even run the system.”
When asked if he would grant such access to change the system, he replied, “I have no ability to grant that change.”
As the Secretary of Treasury, Bessent also oversees the IRS. When asked “Do you know the kind of access the [DOGE] team has to IRS data or individual taxpayer data?” he replied, “As of now, there is no engagement at the IRS.”
In a follow-up Bessent was asked: “And if they request that access, would you sign-off on that request?” He replied: “They haven’t, so we’ll take that as it comes to it.” The Treasury Secretary added: “There are a lot of things I would consider but look, we’re in the middle of the tax filing season right now.”