April 10,2025

Wyden, Whitehouse Lead Colleagues in Demanding Answers on DOGE’s Access to the Sensitive National Child Support Database

The Federal Parent Locator Service Holds Identifying Information of All Working Americans, Whether or Not They Pay Child Support 

Career HHS employees were silenced, ignored, and even potentially purged for refusing to cooperate with DOGE’s illegal request and potential invasion of privacy for tens of millions of Americans

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., today led colleagues in raising serious concern over Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the national child support database – which contains deeply personal identifying information (PII) of all American workers and minors – without providing any legitimate reason, potentially in violation of the law. 

In a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  and Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent, the senators highlighted the catastrophic consequences of improper access and use of this sensitive information, including the potential for Americans and businesses being targeted for political gains or exploitative financial purposes. Additionally, the senators underscored that such access is unprecedented with even non-partisan agencies with extensive authority to access records and information, like the Government Accountability Office (GAO), being denied access in the past.

“The personally-identifiable information holds significant commercial value as well as competitive advantage for individuals seeking to use it for financial gain. Likewise, it could be misappropriated to target Americans and businesses for political means or exploitative financial purposes,” wrote the senators. “In many ways, this is one of the most comprehensive and sensitive data systems DOGE has accessed yet because of how many different personally-identifying elements it ties together.”

Because DOGE was denied access to similar information by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the senators expressed concerns that DOGE’s access to the national child support database could be a backdoor method to evade federal judges’ preliminary injunctions and a walkback of Treasury’s public commitment that it will limit DOGE’s access to PII, like social security numbers. 

The senators also raised concerns over the treatment of career civil servants who stood up for protecting this sensitive information, as legally required, stating, “It was reported that career civil servants at HHS sounded the alarm regarding DOGE’s request to access components of the FPLS, citing the extremely sensitive nature of this data and long-standing precedent of protecting this information.  This person’s concerns were overruled as, just two days later, reports confirmed that DOGE had been granted access to the child support database.  It appears that at least one person who spoke up is no longer employed by HHS, raising additional concerns that the Trump Administration may be purging career civil servants who refuse to cooperate with its illegal orders.”

Wyden and Whitehouse were joined by Senate Finance Committee members Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ben Ray Lújan, D-N.M., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Tina Smith, D-Minn.

The senators demanded a Finance Committee-level briefing representatives from all implicated agencies and a response to the following questions by May 5, 2025:

  1. Why is DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE, seeking access to the FPLS? 
    1. How has it used this information to date and how does it intend to use this information moving forward? 
    2. What was the original justification for seeking access to the database? 
    3. Did the justification for seeking access to the database change over time?
    4. Please provide any documents, emails, meeting notes, or other written materials that purport to substantiate DOGE’s specific access request.
  1. Which officials at HHS, the Department of Treasury, or DOGE approved the request to grant DOGE access to the FPLS? Please identify each official who granted approval, as well as specifically indicate if any of the below individuals, or direct reports to these individuals, were involved in this decision making. Name any such direct reports. 
    1. Secretary Kennedy, HHS.
    2. Elon Musk, Special Government Employee, DOGE.
    3. Amy Gleason, Acting Administrator of DOGE.
    4. Andrew Gradison, Acting Assistant Secretary of ACF.
    5. Leland C. Dudek, Acting Commissioner of SSA.
  1. Were any Trump Administration nominees not yet appointed to their positions involved in this decision making? Name any such individuals.
  2. Were any individuals serving in positions at the White House or the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) involved in this decision making? Name any such individuals. 
  3. Did the Acting HHS General Counsel draft a Memorandum Opinion, or any other written document, analyzing the lawfulness of granting DOGE employees access to the FLPS under Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code and 42 U.S.C. § 653(l), as the office did in 2011 when considering the permissibility of GAO’s access? 
    1. If so, please produce these documents.
    2. If any legal analysis was conducted or discussed, please produce the written documents and/or correspondence. 
  1. There are multiple components that make up the national child support database known as the FPLS. Please detail which components of the FPLS that DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE, had access to and currently has access to (as  of April 10, 2025) and whether there are any limitations.
  2. Some programs and agencies have DOGE “liaisons.” Are there any individuals who have had access to the FPLS or currently have access to the FPLS (as of April 10, 2025) who are sole DOGE employees?
    1. If so, please list the training(s) that DOGE employees underwent prior to receiving FPLS access. 
  1. What type of access did or do (as of April 10, 2025) DOGE employees, or any individuals or entities operating under the guise or direction of DOGE (including such individuals who may have been onboarded to HHS and received a federal agency or departmental email address) have to each component of the national child support database?
    1. Please provide a list of individuals who had or have (as of April 10, 2025) access beyond read-only access.
    2. If any portions of the FPLS or its data have been edited, modified, deleted, or moved by DOGE since January 20, 2025, please describe those changes.
    3. For each component, were any individual query searches performed by DOGE?
      1. If so, what were the keyword searches?
  1. Have any data points or fields from the FPLS been downloaded or exported by DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE, since January 20, 2025?
    1. If so, please describe the purpose of this data exportation. 
    2. If so, please describe how this data is being used outside of the FPLS. 
    3. If so, please describe who has access to this data. 
    4. If so, please describe where this information is being held. 
    5. If so, please describe how this information is being protected.
    6. If so, were any private or commercial servers connected or integrated into FPLS to review, edit, modify, access, delete, move, or otherwise change data?
  1. Have DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE, used any artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including machine-learning algorithms or large-language models, on any portion of the FPLS?
    1. If so, please describe the AI tools that were used and their purpose. 
  1. Have DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE, used any of the data from the FPLS for any AI tool development, including as training weights? 
  2. Have DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE,  disclosed any of the sensitive, personally-identifiable information in the FPLS to any unauthorized persons at federal agencies since January 20, 2025? 
  3. Have DOGE, or any individuals or entities operating under the direction of DOGE,  disclosed any of the sensitive, personally-identifiable information in the FPLS to any unauthorized persons outside the federal government since January 20, 2025?
  4. Please confirm whether data contained within the FPLS has been shared with the following government agencies by OCSS or DOGE since January 20, 2025, and, if so, for what purpose and the extent of the data shared: 
    1. The Department of Commerce?
    2. The Department of Defense?
    3. The Department of Energy?
    4. The Department of Homeland Security?
    5. The Department of Housing and Urban Development?
    6. The Department of Justice?
    7. The Department of Labor?
    8. The Department of Transportation?
  1. In order to receive access to the NDNH, an agency is required to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or Computer Matching Agreement (CMA). While not an agency, did DOGE enter into such an agreement with OCSS?
    1. If so, please provide a copy of this signed document. 
  1. In order to receive access to the NDNH, an agency is required to sign a security addendum, which sets out the security requirements and safeguards an agency must have in place to receive NDNH information. While not an agency, did DOGE sign a security addendum with OCSS?

The letter text is available here. 

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