Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discusses his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, the state of the United States economy and the Trump administration’s tariff policy on ‘Special Report.’
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent provided some sense of relief for Americans and politicians worried over the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to federal agency data, giving a reality check to those DOGE alarmists.
“The American taxpayers don’t have to be concerned about any of this,” Bessent said on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Tuesday. “I think it’s unfortunate that [Democrats are] trying to… lampoon what Elon Musk and the DOGE team is doing.”
“I think it’s very unfortunate they’re trying to be fearmongerers with the American people,” he added.
Trump’s newly minted DOGE under the leadership of Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink founder Elon Musk was recently given the green light to access account data and details from federal agencies including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Departments of Labor, Human and Health Services and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after facing legal roadblocks.
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In response, protests have taken place across the country and Democratic politicians have been outspoken against DOGE’s cost-cutting tactics, claiming the data access risks national security and that Musk is opening “the door for criminals to get involved,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., recently said in a press briefing.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent assured average Americans “don’t have to be concerned about any” of DOGE’s investigation tactics or findings. (Getty Images)
Other top Democrats, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have criticized Musk and DOGE.
“Here at Treasury, two people, they had read-only access to the systems and they’ve remodeled the system. They have no ability to touch anything. They have no ability to make any changes. There are very strict guardrails around them,” Bessent explained.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent addresses President Donald Trump’s economic and fiscal goals during his first interview on ‘Kudlow’ since joining the administration.
“At the IRS, one person out of 90,000 employees is looking at this outdated I.T. system. That’s all they’re doing. And this kind of fearmongering doesn’t help anybody,” he expanded. “But it tells me that people are worried that they’re part of the waste, fraud and abuse.”
In a Tuesday pre-taped interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Musk estimated alongside President Donald Trump that DOGE has only uncovered about one percent of alleged federal spending fraud.
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President Donald Trump and Elon Musk join ‘Hannity’ to discuss criticism of DOGE and whether the country is facing a ‘constitutional crisis.’
“We all think there’s waste. There is abuse. I think there may be some real fraud here,” Bessent said.
“I got a pretty good story to tell, that if we can do this cost-cutting, if we can grow the economy, then President Trump is going to live up to all those promises.”
