Political Quotes

“Haley Stevens and I introduced the Taxpayer Data Protection Act last week. This is a very simple but, tragically, an urgently necessary bill to address the hack of the U.S. Treasury payment system by Elon Musk and his band of IT goons last week. This bill would limit the Secretary of the Treasury's ability to give access to the payment system only to people who: A, have a top secret security clearance; B, have no conflicts of interest; C, are not special government employees; and, D, have been Federal employees for at least a year. Why is this necessary? What happened last week comprised one of the most significant breaches of privacy and threats to our national security, perhaps ever. I am not exaggerating. This was done with the consent of Treasury Secretary Bessent. This point is important because some of my colleagues across the aisle have suggested that somehow what they are doing is just normal diligence. This is decidedly abnormal. It is so abnormal, in fact, that, when David Lebryk, the Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former Acting Secretary of the Treasury, refused to grant access to Elon Musk, Secretary Bessent fired Mr. Lebryk so that Musk could force his way in. Let's understand the scope of what happened. The Treasury Department manages a $5 trillion-a-year Federal payment system. This is the way that every branch of government pays their bills.…”