"There are two plausible reasons why they might want access to personal information that no prior administration had ever requested, neither of them very good. The first is that Trump intends to break the law and selectively make the payments mandated by Congress.

The point here is that, under the law, the president does not have the discretion to decide which payments they want to make. The president has the option to veto bills that include spending they don’t like, but once spending has been approved and signed into law, they legally must spend it. That is the clear wording of the constitution as affirmed repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

If Trump plans to ignore the law, and possibly even a Supreme Court ruling, then it would be useful to have direct control over the system of payments. This would effectively make him a dictator, he could do whatever he felt like with our tax dollars, with or without Congressional approval.

The other reason why Elon Musk might want control over the system of payments is that it gives him access to an enormous amount of financial information about almost every person in the country. Musk has said that he wants to turn his Twitter social media platform into an all-purpose financial service operation. Having access to detailed information on hundreds of millions of people would give Musk a huge leg up in this effort." #corruption #coup #fascism #oligarchy
https://cepr.net/publications/elon-is-in-your-underwear/