Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to payment system

I&#x27;m going to guess the the Secure Payment System mentioned in the article is this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fiscal.treasury.gov&#x2F;sps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fiscal.treasury.gov&#x2F;sps&#x2F;</a><p>As it says on the SPS website, the they use PKI! ... Wait a tick, is that what Elon wants access to? So he can read&#x2F;write the federal account ledgers? Or perhaps Elon wants to control the CA behind it. The article mentions very select few personnel have access, which sounds like this... Yeah that might be enough of a reason for a long time, very senior federal employee to call it quits all of sudden, so as to not be the stooge that gives away the keys to Elon (particularly the CA keys). (Pure uneducated speculation)<p>I&#x27;m going to guess the explainer for the office(s) in question: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bureau_of_the_Fiscal_Service" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bureau_of_the_Fiscal_Service</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Office_of_Fiscal_Service" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Office_of_Fiscal_Service</a><p>Sounds like Wyden is at least asking questions, now that someone at Treasury has fallen on their sword: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.finance.senate.gov&#x2F;chairmans-news&#x2F;wyden-demands-answers-following-report-of-musk-personnel-seeking-access-to-highly-sensitive-us-treasury-payments-system" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.finance.senate.gov&#x2F;chairmans-news&#x2F;wyden-demands-...</a>

The &quot;retirement&quot; timing here is interesting. OPM&#x27;s own &quot;apply for retirement&quot; forms state to supply the filled out form to one&#x27;s HR office at least 60 days before one&#x27;s retirement date to give time for it to be processed by HR and OPM.<p>So either this official got the worlds fastest processing of a retirement application through their HR department and through OPM, or he was already retiring on Jan 31 anyway and the timing is just a coincidence.<p>It is common in federal service to retire on the last day of the month because retirement pensions are paid on the first day of each month, so one has the smallest &#x27;gap&#x27; in payments by doing so.

Is Elon trying to Twitterize the federal government? Is it really the case that renaming the Digital Services agency to DOGE allows him to do whatever he wants? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;elon-musk-is-reportedly-taking-control-of-the-inner-workings-of-us-government-agencies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;31&#x2F;elon-musk-is-reportedly-ta...</a>

Shouldn&#x27;t an oversight group have read access to the Government&#x27;s accounts payable data? Congress ought to have that data. For any recipient over $1 million, it ought to be public.

&gt;&gt; &quot;This is a mechanical job—they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It&#x27;s not one where there&#x27;s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they&#x27;re due,&quot; Mazur was quoted as saying. &quot;It&#x27;s never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda… You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case.&quot;

Buffett likes to say &quot;never bet against America&quot;. It really feels like this time it may actually be different. All of recent actions from Trump &#x2F; Elon reeks grift, corruption and idiocy.<p>What I&#x27;m really really curious about, is who&#x27;s playing who ? Elon is playing Trump or the other way around ?

Can some Trumper explain to us all why it&#x27;s a good idea for Elon (the biggest capitalist in the world) to have access to all of the Treasury&#x27;s data?<p>Naively it seems corrupt.