Elon Musk walks on the Capitol hill on the day of a Republican leader from Senate John Thune (R-SD), in Washington, US 5 December 2024.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Five former Treasury secretaries warned on Monday that recent actions were on Ministry of Finance per Trump administration officials and Elon muskTim Doge -a raises a “significant cause for concern” that have “unlawfully” undermined the financial obligations of the United States.
“During our service at the Ministry of Finance, he faced the moments of crisis, when he subjected a spectrum of US non -payment,” former UA secretaries wrote New York Times Op-ed.
“Any hint of the selective suspension of congress authorized payments will be a violation of trust and in the end, a form of non -payment. And our credibility, once lost, will show difficult to return,” they wrote.
But Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president Donald Trumprejected the concern of the former secretary during an interview with CNBC “Squawk Box”.
Scott Besent Treasury Secretary, he said, “he found out that the controls were spending the previous [Biden] The administration was unacceptable. They joked money without knowing where the money goes. “
Hassett also said that the idea was to behave, according to his words, a “doll master” at the Ministry of Finance was “Poppycock”.
“Elon Musk is in the office beside me,” Hassett said. “He’s not controlled.”
Former secretaries who wrote OP-ed were Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen, who all served under democratic presidents: Bill Clinton,, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Kevin Hassett
Ashley Stringer | CNBC
Two -tone narratives come in the middle of escalation legal battles Excessive access to the highly sensitive payment systems of the Ministry of Finance, which was sought and approved by members of the Musk team of the Ministry of the Government.
As Doge Other elements of Trump administration are also transformed into federal consumption and employees, the Government’s payment system operated by the Fiscal Treasury Service has attracted their attention.
Their OP-ed states that last week reported the Times that the head of the Ministry of Finance originally requested a member of the Musk’s Doge team, Tom Krause, “to receive access to a tight pay system so the treasury could freeze payments to the US International Development Agency.”
E -Mail’s who has seen the “explanation of the treasure of the treasury” for why Krause and other Musk members have received access to the payment system, which pays more than $ 5 trillion of federal funding, the newspaper said.
The Ministry of Finance has said that Krause and his team “implement” an assessment of operating efficiency “that does not involve blocking the agency,” Times reported.
In their OP-Ed, former secretaries said that the approach “accelerated” the long-standing practice of payment systems operated by a “very small group of non-partisan civil servants in their careers”.
“The role of these non -partisan officials threatened political actors From the so-called Government Efficiency Department, “Op-ed.
“We take the extraordinary step of writing this work because we are upset due to the risk of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be illegal and corrosive for our democracy,” former secretaries wrote.
Hassettwhich runs the National Economic Council, hardly claimed against Premise and claims on Monday.
“Can we first talk about the treasure letter?” Hassett asked “Squawk Box“The hosts.” There is so much misinformation in it. “
Hassett continued: “Let it be clearly clear that the secretary of the Treasury, Scott Beesent, is in charge of the treasury.”
Bessent, Hassett said, “revealed that the consumption controls were previous [Biden] The administration was unacceptable. “
“They sent money without the knowledge where the money goes. They joked money without marking, you know,” What was that? “They didn’t check before they sent the money, whether it was appropriated,” Hassett said. “And as we enter and watch, we find a lot of things that were not to be sent.”
Hassett said, “There’s a lot of work to do to clean it.”
“This idea that there is a master of a puppet who tells the Treasury Minister what to do, and therefore all treasury secretaries must be, like, alarmed, these are only left -wing media, you know, Poppycock.”
“Why do we make up false things about what Elon does because we’re trying to see where the money goes,” Hassett said.
“And I think in the end we will find that a lot of money has gone to bad places.”
