DOGE team led by Musk will seek to obtain US Treasury accounting data next week

Odaily Planet Daily News According to a person familiar with the matter, Musk will send a DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) team to Parkersburg, West Virginia next week, where they will be given read-only access to the U.S. government's central accounting system. The planned visit opens a new window to some of the government's most sensitive financial data. Earlier this week, a federal judge restricted the DOGE team's access to the Treasury's payment system in a lawsuit filed by unions and a retiree group worried about privacy issues. Musk seeks direct access to federal data systems as part of his new role as head of DOGE. The DOGE team will go to the Bureau of Fiscal Services building in Parkersburg from Tuesday to Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Treasury's Central Accounting Reporting System (CARS) is located here, which handles accounting and reporting access for all federal agencies. CARS data is used to build national balance sheets, but also handles bank information from agencies and the Federal Reserve. But it is different from the payment system that the DOGE team has accessed before. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a temporary restraining order Thursday saying only two DOGE employees, Tom Krause and Marko Elez, can access the payments, and only in read-only mode. Elez was fired the same day for making racist comments, but Musk and Vice President JD Vance said he should be rehired. The Parkersburg facility also houses what was formerly known as the Bureau of Public Debt, which tallies the $28.9 trillion national debt every day and provides some back-office functions for other federal agencies. All employees undergo background, credit and security checks, including fingerprinting, every three to five years. Musk said Saturday that he had reached an agreement with Treasury officials on a range of issues regarding how federal payments will be audited, recorded and reconciled against an existing list of entities that “prohibited payments.” He called the actions “very obvious and necessary changes” that will be implemented by existing career government employees. It’s unclear how many of the measures Musk requested have been implemented. The Treasury Department did not immediately confirm the agreement on Saturday. (Fortune)