HHS grants DOGE access to child support database, overriding objections

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/08/hhs-doge-child-support/

The Department of Health and Human Services has granted associates of the U.S. DOGE Service access to a sensitive child support database with troves of income data, overriding the objections of career employees, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The government database — created to help enforce child support payments and overseen by the Administration for Children and Families, or ACF — contains substantial amounts of personal income data linked to nearly all U.S. workers. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

“It is essentially an end-run around the confidential taxpayer information protected by the IRS,” Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, and colleagues wrote to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a letter shared with The Washington Post. “No one, including DOGE, should be rummaging around in the confidential information of private citizens at any agency where the protected information resides.”