Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) lead Elon Musk, plans to send officials to Parkersburg, West Virginia, next week to gain read-only access to the U.S. government’s Central Accounting Reporting System (CARS).
As part of DOGE’s role, Musk has actively requested access to multiple financial records; however, the billionaire is already being dragged to court over privacy violations.
The Tesla CEO has faced resistance to accessing the federal data systems and has recently been restricted from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system.
A federal judge is still hearing arguments in a lawsuit filed by employee unions and retirees, who allege that the billionaire violated privacy laws.
Only two employees, Tom Krause and Marko Elez have been permitted to access payments, and only on a read-only basis.
Nevertheless, Musk will coordinate a visit to the Bureau of Fiscal Service building in Parkersburg, supposedly from Tuesday through Thursday next week, to get CARS data.
The CARS data is slightly different from the other payment systems data Musk has asked to access, especially since it’s used to compile the country’s balance sheet and handle banking information from agencies and the Federal Reserve Bank.
The CARS database also keeps tabs on the transactions across federal agencies till the final destination of funds.
Moreover, the treasury offices in Parkersburg Musk plans to visit also house the Bureau of Public Debt, which is responsible for daily accounting for the $28.9 trillion national debt.
Musk said on February 8, that the DOGE team and the U.S. treasury agreed on certain conditions, moving forward, calling them “super obvious and necessary” changes that have to be implemented.
According to Musk, the U.S. Treasury will have a payment categorization code for all outgoing government payments to facilitate financial audits.
Furthermore, all future payments will require intent or rationale to be filled in the comment section. He argued that filling out the rationale is a simple attempt to explain the payment rather than giving nothing by leaving the field blank.
Additionally, the DO-NOT-PAY list of entities, usually fraudulent, dead, or fronts for terrorist groups, must be enforced, insisting that the list should even be updated weekly or daily, if possible.
However, the U.S. treasury has yet to confirm whether they agreed on any of these changes.
Musk had even asked for the treasury to address the entitlement payment fraud issue. He said that he was informed that over $100 billion per year in entitlement payments are being made to individuals without an SSN or even a temporary ID number.
From 2020 to 2023, US debt surged by $10 trillion, with total debt ballooning past $35 trillion. For perspective, the US took 221 years to rack up its first $12 trillion in debt.
But thanks to years of reckless spending by the Biden administration via USAID, the same amount of money was added in just five years.
The debt ceiling, suspended until late 2025, means the federal government can spend freely. And they have—adding over $12 trillion since 2020. Elon’s D.O.G.E is meant to reverse this.
Treasury data shows that since the 2008 financial crisis, total US debt has soared by 360%. And as Elon sees it, unchecked deficit spending is dragging the US economy to the edge of collapse. One of the key issues is the flood of Treasury bonds being pumped into the market to fund federal spending.
On day eight of D.O.G.E’s operations, Elon shared on X that $1 billion in daily savings had already been achieved. The Tesla CEO promised he could eventually get to $4 billion per day by 2026. By his estimates, that would reduce the projected $1.87 trillion deficit to just $410 billion—a 78% drop.
D.O.G.E is going after two of the government’s largest money pits: unused office space and fraudulent spending. Elon’s plan to cut up to two-thirds of federal office space comes at a critical time.
Real estate prices for office buildings have already fallen more than 30% from their peak, and no major government agency currently uses more than 50% of its available space.
With 511 million square feet of federal property, maintenance alone costs $76 billion per year. Factoring in other expenses, that’s over $100 billion annually—roughly 6% of the FY2024 deficit.
But of course, a lot of people don’t agree with his method. Three weeks after D.O.G.E’s spending cuts began, Elon’s access to federal spending databases was blocked.
If Elon’s daily cuts reach $2 billion, inflation could decline, but GDP would collapse. Reducing federal spending by $1.8 trillion in one year would cut GDP by $2.8 trillion, or 9.4%. The Great Recession of 2008 only saw a 4% drop. Millions of jobs (both government and private) would vanish.
Bankruptcies would surge and industries dependent on federal contracts would crumble. The worst-case scenario? A depression larger than anything since the 1930s. But the US has few options left.
If the government keeps spending $2 trillion annually on borrowed money, inflation and debt will continue to spiral. Without that spending, the economy won’t function “normally.” How alarming is that?
Meanwhile, Trump is also facing the Heat over DOGE.
Nineteen states, led by Democratic attorneys general from New York, California, and others, recently declared war on President Donald Trump and his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
On Friday, they filed a lawsuit in a New York federal court, accusing the administration of illegally giving Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to highly sensitive personal data and financial systems managed by the US Treasury.
This lawsuit is of course the result of Trump’s executive order creating D.O.G.E, a temporary unit designed to cut wasteful spending and modernize government tech. What sounds simple on paper has turned into legal chaos and a political disaster.
The lawsuit claims Trump and Scott let Elon and his D.O.G.E crew have unrestricted access to the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS), which is responsible for managing billions of dollars in federal payments, from Social Security and Medicare to critical state funding.
According to the states, no one authorized this decision publicly, and no security measures were put in place.
“Bessent’s implementation of Treasury’s new broader access policy, allowing Elon and his D.O.G.E team to access BFS’s payment systems, was adopted without any public announcement or explanation,” the states’ legal filing said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who’s leading the charge, blasted the decision as reckless in her statement.
“The President does not have the power to give away our private information to anyone he chooses,” James said. She warned that Elon’s team is attempting to control or halt the flow of federal money to essential programs.
The states want the court to issue a permanent restraining order to block D.O.G.E from accessing Treasury data. They’re also demanding stricter vetting for anyone granted access, including mandatory background checks and security clearances, according to the filing.
