DOGE Reportedly Gets Access to Government’s Accounting Hub

Elon Musk is reportedly sending his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access the federal government’s central accounting system.

DOGE will head to Parkersburg, West Virginia, in the coming days, and will have read-only access to the system, Bloomberg News reported Saturday (Feb. 8), citing a source familiar with the matter.

The visit, the report said, offers DOGE a new window into some of the government’s most sensitive financial information, and follows a recent court ruling blocking the department from accessing the Treasury’s payment system.

Musk, the world’s richest person and close adviser to the White House, has been looking for direct access to federal data systems in his role as DOGE’s head. He has — on social media — taken credit for canceling billions in federal spending, though the Treasury maintains Musk has no authorization to do so from its payment systems.

Now, DOGE is headed to the Bureau of Fiscal Service building in Parkersburg from Tuesday (Feb. 11) through Thursday (Feb. 13), the source told Bloomberg. 

That building is home to the Treasury’s Central Accounting Reporting System, or CARS, which handles accounting and reporting access for all federal agencies. CARS data is used to put together the government’s balance sheet, and also processes bank information from agencies and the Federal Reserve Bank.

However, the report added, it’s different from the disbursement systems that Musk’s DOGE teams have accessed before.

Last week U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a temporary restraining order Thursday saying just two DOGE employees — Tom Krause and Marko Elez — can access payments, and just on a read-only basis. 

Elez was fired that same day due his history of racist comments, though Musk and Vice President JD Vance have called for him to be reinstated.

PYMNTS spoke about the controversy surrounding Musk and DOGE last week with Amias Gerety, partner at QED Investors  and a former Treasury official during the Obama administration.

Beyond the immediate questions of legality, Gerety spotlighted the larger economic consequences of uncertainty surrounding federal payments.

“If there’s one phrase that dominates discussions about the Treasury’s role in the nation’s finances, it’s ‘full faith and credit,’” he said. “The full faith and credit of the U.S. government should not be impeached. It’s literally in the [Constitution]. If you’re a bank, if you’re an investor, if you’re a government contractor, if you’re a retiree receiving Social Security — you have to ask, will my payments go through? That uncertainty should be felt around the world.”

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