Wisconsin senator wants DOGE out of sensitive farmer payment system
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to revoke high-level access granted to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to a sensitive database that controls tens of billions of dollars in payments and loans to American farmers and ranchers.
While DOGE’s original figurehead, billionaire CEO Elon Musk, has left Washington amid an ongoing feud with President Trump, staffers linked to the government efficiency unit continue to embed inside U.S. federal agencies and policy processes.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Meanwhile, DOGE staffers are actively reviewing certain farm loans and guarantees, despite having no stated background in agriculture or finance, while USDA loan officers are trained for years in the field. News of this review process quickly sparked outrage among some Senate Democrats, who argued in a separate letter sent on May 6 that “creating more red tape for customers who often have no other options for credit could prevent farmers from getting crops in the ground, animals fed, or cause a beginning farmer to miss out on the purchase of their first parcel of land.”
Baldwin, in her letter to Rollins, writes that “farmers share sensitive financial information with USDA when seeking loans or disaster assistance,” trusting that “only trained Farm Service Agency staff and senior USDA officials have had access to this data.”
She identifies the USDA employees linked to DOGE as an “unappointed and unelected group of Washington insiders with no accountability to farmers,” whom she argues “should not be in charge of delaying disaster relief checks or blocking contracts,” particularly at a time when farmers face “volatile market conditions” and “increasingly severe weather.”
“Farmers deserve to know that their private information is protected and will not be exported for unauthorized, and potentially illegal uses,” she wrote. “In the wrong hands, sensitive data about our nation’s agricultural sector could be taken advantage of to exploit vulnerabilities in our food supply chains.”
“I urge you to take immediate steps to restore the public’s confidence in the security of USDA’s payment systems” and “rescind DOGE’s access to farmers’ private data as well as their involvement in payment and loan decisions,” Baldwin wrote.