Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) joined a group of 26 Democratic Senators calling on Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins to take immediate action to secure veterans’ personal information provided by VA or other agencies to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This letter follows Musk’s takeover of the U.S. Treasury’s payment system, which includes private information of veterans and their families and could jeopardize critical payments veterans rely on.
In a letter to Collins, Cortez Masto and the Senators demanded the Secretary deny and sever Musk and DOGE’s access to any VA or other government system with information about veterans, and to delete any veterans’ information in their possession: “Among many tasks, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is entrusted with safeguarding the private and sensitive information of millions of veterans…Veterans risked their lives to defend our country, and they deserve better than to have an unelected billionaire reviewing their medical records, targeting the benefits they have earned, or using their private information for personal gain.”
The Senators underscored the vast amounts of veterans’ private, sensitive information entrusted to VA, at-risk of being abused by Musk. The Senators also stressed their concerns of Musk and DOGE’s ability to freely access this information with no transparency or accountability mechanisms: “Meanwhile, the President has given unfettered access to federal databases and systems to Mr. Musk, an unelected citizen, and a team of colleagues with no formal documented employment agreement with the U.S. government…We are outraged these unelected, unvetted, and unaccountable individuals now have access to sensitive information that has been heavily secured for decades and by Administrations of both parties.”
There are millions of veterans’ medical records stored in VA’s computer systems. These confidential records include veterans’ prescriptions, diagnoses, and procedures they have undergone. Access to these medical records could give Musk and DOGE the ability to identify veterans who have received abortions or abortion counseling in the past. The Million Veteran Program, which manages the genomic data of its more than one million veteran participants for authorized research programs, also stores its data in VA data systems. In addition, the U.S. Treasury’s payment system stores private information of veterans, surviving spouses, and their families, including their monthly disability compensation amount, home address, and bank account numbers.
Calling on VA Secretary Collins to uphold the promises he made to Senators during his confirmation process, the group of Senators concluded: “During your confirmation process, you claimed you would be focused on rooting out corruption and ensuring accountability at VA, and committed to following the laws passed by Congress. We now call on you to respond quickly and comprehensively to these privacy violations by revoking DOGE’s access to VA systems and insisting they permanently remove all VA data collected from their files.”
The full text of the senators’ can be found here.
Senator Cortez Masto is a champion for our service members and their families, as well as our veterans. She passed her Brian Neuman Act into law to remove roadblocks for disabled veterans accessing their benefits. She passed the PACT Act to ensure veterans suffering from toxic exposure in the line of duty get the medical care they need and worked across the aisle to get legislation helping veterans exposed to Agent Orange and expanding benefits for women veterans signed into law.
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