WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democratic U.S. congressional leaders will push legislation this week to “prevent unlawful meddling” by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency in the Treasury Department payment system, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday.
Billionaire Elon Musk chairs the informal DOGE group, which was tasked by President Donald Trump to identify fraud and waste in the government. Last week, the team gained access to the most sensitive payment systems at Treasury and, as Reuters reported, locked some employees out of their agency’s computers.
“Whatever DOGE is doing, it is certainly not what democracy looks like, or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country, because democracy does not work in the shadows, democracy does not skirt the rule of law,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Musk, who has moved swiftly to shrink the size of the U.S. government at Trump’s behest, is now considered a “special government employee,” the White House said on Monday.
Schumer said he and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries intended for the legislation “to prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury department’s payment systems, to prevent everyone’s records from being made available to a small group of people who can look at them at will.”
Schumer said the legislation would deny special government employees access to sensitive government records.
Restrictions would also extend to those without proper clearances and add personal tax information to privacy-protected data.
Musk, the founder of the Tesla electric car company and SpaceX has contracts with the U.S. government as well as operations in China.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Mark Porter and Cynthia Osterman)
