Two Democratic lawmakers — Reps. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Gwen Moore (D-WI) — found House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be "alarmingly" ignorant of Elon Musk's intentions as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rampaged its way through the federal government, according to a new report.
The congresswomen are members of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the Treasury Department. They wrote in an opinion piece for MSNBC that they "marched" to Johnson's office in an attempt to question Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was scheduled to meet with the House speaker.
Chu and Moore wanted answers to the following questions: "Does no one outside of Musk and his team know how this data is being handled and used? Is it being manipulated? Are back doors into the system being added? Where is any extracted data being maintained?"
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Although the lawmakers were denied access to the treasury secretary, they were permitted to meet with Johnson, "But alarmingly, Johnson revealed that he didn’t know DOGE’s intentions."
"He couldn’t answer our questions with any degree of specificity, which speaks to how rogue DOGE’s operation is," they wrote. "And even though he committed to oversight to help answer our constituents’ questions, we’ve not yet received a response from him regarding that commitment."
The lawmakers wrote, "Checks and balances are a constitutional responsibility to restrain an overzealous branch of government. We refuse to stand by while Trump and Musk test the limits of our democracy."
So, while the judicial branch "processes lawsuits challenging Musk and DOGE’s actions and access at Treasury," Chu and Moore wrote that they'll use their legislative powers to "fight to keep Americans’ sensitive data private and protect the payment systems that Americans depend on."
"House Democrats only need three Republican members to join us in supporting our Taxpayer Data Protection Act to force a vote on the House floor. So far, none have. But we will keep fighting to pursue accountability, get answers and aggressively push for transparency," they wrote.