Violating an explicit law and getting away with it is how autocrats kill democracies. This commentary presents one important example. When the Secretary of the Treasury gave Elon Musk and a few of his young “whiz kids” access to the Treasury Payments System and Musk immediately targeted the Lutheran Family Services, he was breaking the law. Let me explain.
The United States Treasury is the place where all US government revenue sits until it is spent. When millions of Americans receive our social security checks that money is drawn from the treasury. The Treasury’s payments system is the equivalent of the US government’s checkbook. A handful of Treasury officials oversee the working of that system but the job is routine. Congress appropriates money and the Treasury officials oversee the actually disbursal. In the case of social security checks, Congress specifies the RULES by which our payments are calculated and those rules produce the actual dollar amounts we are entitled to. All social security recipients are told at the end of the year how much payments would be for the next twelve months and how much would be deducted to pay Medicare premiums. Those checks earmarked for the millions of social security recipients are then generated through that payments system.
In a so far successful coup d’etat a man with no government job, billionaire Elon Musk, used his membership in an organization called the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE to gain access to the Treasury payment system.
[For details see “Treasury Department gives Elon Musk, DOGE team access to federal payment system: sources,” ABC 7 Eyewitness News, February 3, 2025, available here.]
DOGE, by the way, is not a part of the US government --- it was never created by Congress--- As far as I can tell, it is a temporary entity created by the President and is housed within something called the United States Digital Service. Trump created the entity and charged it with figuring out ways to cut government spending. It has no power to enforce its recommendations as all cuts to federal spending must be approved by Congress.
Let me restate this – Musk is NOT a government employee. He has not even been nominated to a government position --- and has not been subject to Congressional vetting or approval.
However, by gaining access to the Treasury’s payments system, Musk and his “whiz kids” now have the ability to stop any payment he wants by clicking a few keys on a computer. And to prove he could do that, he immediately targeted a Lutheran Church charity (which provides services to refugees).
[For details see “Musk threatens to pull federal funding from Lutheran Family Services,” February 4, 2025, available here. He did this because convicted perjurer General Michael Flynn had accused the organization of money laundering.]
Here is the key to the reason some observers are referring to this maneuver as a coup d’etat. According to the Constitution, Congress has the sole power of the purse. It votes on taxes and spending. In the 1970s, President Nixon sought to avoid spending funds that Congress has already appropriated. Congress responded with the Budget Impoundment Act of 1974. That law created a mechanism whereby a President can “request” that Congress not spend money already appropriated but reiterated that the President could not unilaterally stop that spending.
But Musk --- a non-elected, non-member of the US government --- by gaining access to the Treasury payments system has the ability to just refuse to write any check. And in order to demonstrate his power he threatened to stop payments to that Lutheran Charity.
Musk’s accusations against that charity came with no evidence that that organization had done anything wrong. (Flynn made his charges without any evidence, also.) Instead, Musk changed the subject. He charged that payment approval officers at Treasury ALWAYS approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. Without any evidence he wrote on X that Treasury, “ … never denied a payment … . Not even once.” And even THAT is not true. There is a “do not pay” rule that comes to the fore if a payment is thought to be fraudulent.
I think Musk did this to demonstrate to the rest of us that he CAN do it --- that NO ONE will stop him. If he and his whiz kids can get away with this maneuver it will become the best way for the Trump Administration through him to circumvent the law that says Presidents CANNOT unilaterally refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.
So far, the Courts have weighed in temporarily interfering with this effort --- details here.]
It was also good to see people all over the country demonstrating against this incipient fascism this week.
However, given the way the Supreme Court has enhanced Trump’s powers (giving him a “get out of jail free card” last summer), there is no telling how far the Supreme Court will go in giving this President powers that that Constitution makes clear belong only to Congress. Thus, legal efforts must be supplemented by as much political resistance as possible.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.