Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) went after tech billionaire Elon Musk over a report that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been trying to access an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system.
“I want to save billions of your money and make our government more efficient. Rummaging through your personal s— is *not* that. A party of chaos loses—always,” Fetterman said in a post on the social platform X Monday.
His post featured a screenshot of a Politico headline from a report on DOGE’s attempts to access the IRS’s Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS). A White House official confirmed to Politico the IDRS access effort by DOGE.
DOGE, which Musk leads, has started accounts on the social platform X for the IRS and the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) looking for “insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse” at both agencies. On Monday, Musk reposted messages from both accounts.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday wrote to acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell, requesting information on access to IDRS by DOGE and stating worries over possible privacy violations.
“No executive order requiring agency heads to provide DOGE personnel access to IRS records or information technology systems supersedes the federal tax code,” the Massachusetts and Oregon Democrats said.
“Software engineers working for Musk seeking to gain access to tax return information have no right to hoover up taxpayer data and send that data back to any other part of the federal government and may be breaking the law if they are doing so,” they added.
The Hill has reached out to the IRS and the White House for comment.
