U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi was the lead writer of a letter from the House Ways and Means Committee to the Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King, raising concerns about the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to the Treasury’s payment systems.
DOGE, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, has been assigned by the Trump administration to examine U.S. spending and reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal outlays. The group gained access to the Treasury Department at the beginning of February which holds information regarding millions of American citizens, according to published reports.
“At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR,” Musk said on X, the social media site he owns, early Tuesday morning.
Musk had previously tweeted that the goal of auditing the Social Security Administration was to stop fraud and protect Social Security checks for “honest Americans.”
The letter was co-signed by the 19 Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, including Ranking Member Richard Neal. Suozzi and others highlighted both the importance of Social Security and privacy in their letter.
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of Social Security benefits to our nation’s people – or the potentially dire consequences if a beneficiary’s personal information is compromised,” the letter said.
The Social Security Administration has access to Americans’ banking information, home addresses, disability status, medical conditions and Social Security numbers.
“My office alone has received more than 1,000 calls from constituents who are afraid Elon Musk and his DOGE team of college-aged kids have unfettered access to their private information,” Suozzi said in a statement about the letter. “No one, including DOGE, should be ransacking the confidential information of private citizens, whether that information relates to their taxes, their healthcare, their Social Security status, or anything else.”
The letter also calls for King to respond to the letter within 72 hours as it raises a number of questions about the safety and privacy of information from within the administration.
