Turns out Rubio and Bessent are spineless, too. (Catherine Rampell opinion, WaPo, February 4, 2025)

Good column by Catherine Ramped from The Washington Post: 

Opinion

Catherine Rampell

Turns out Rubio and Bessent are spineless, too

The secretaries were supposed to be the ‘adults’ in the Trump administration.

February 4, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. ESTToday at 7:00 a.m. EST

5 min

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the media in Panama City on Feb. 3. (Mark Schiefelbein/Reuters) 

Many of President Donald Trump’s appointees have been self-evidently bad — unqualified, ethically-conflicted cranks. A few, though, were supposed to be competent. Responsible, even. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a respected hedge fund manager, was considered a relatively traditional pick, allowing him to clear his confirmation vote with the help of 16 Democrats. Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly sailed into his Cabinet post with unanimous support from his former Senate colleagues.

Yet, two weeks in, they have both turned out to be spineless cowards.

Both are complicit in the ongoing dismantling of the federal governmentand shredding of the Constitution. They have potentially compromised classified data, threatened Congress’s power of the purse, and handed over the nation’s checkbook to an unelected oligarch.

For months, Elon Musk, who is neither an elected official nor even reportedly a paid government employee, had been demanding access to Treasury’s sensitive payments system. This is the system that issues Social Security checks and Medicare payments and makes good on all the bills our government legally owes to contractors (including, incidentally, some of Musk’s rivals). It is largely automated, with only a few career officials having access to it.

That’s for good reason: Maintaining undisrupted continuity of Treasury cash flows and debt payments is critical for operational reasons, as well as constitutional ones. (The Constitution forbids defaulting on federal debt obligations.) The payment system also contains private and classified data, which makes it a cybersecurity target.

The operatives in Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” demanded control anyway. The most senior career civil servant at Treasury, then-acting secretary David A. Lebryk, refused. The White House ordered Lebryk placed on administrative leave — on Bessent’s recommendation. Instead, Lebryk resigned after serving 11 treasury secretaries in Republican and Democratic administrations, without issue, since 1989.

hen, on Friday evening, the newly minted treasury secretary granted Musk’s deputies access to the federal financial plumbing. Musk has suggested he plans to unilaterally block payments to recipients he dislikes, such as for faith-based organizations helping refugees. It is unclear whether has done so yet, or if he can; the White House told the New York Times that for now DOGE has been granted just “read only access” to these confidential payments.

Where are all those “constitutional conservatives” in Congress — the ones who appropriated funds for these commitments, and whom the Constitution says control power of the purse? What happened to the Treasury pick whom markets supposedly could trust?

In fact, on Monday, Bessent also seized control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at Trump’s behest. Congress created this independent agency after the 2008 financial crisis, meaning it is required to exist by statute. Bessent suspended virtually all of the agency’s work.

This pattern of events might sound familiar to anyone following the collapse of U.S. diplomatic relations and soft power under Rubio’s watch.

When he was a senator, Rubio repeatedly praised the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that receives foreign policy guidance from the secretary of state. Rubio lauded USAID’s global work fighting infectious diseases, aiding hurricane victims and providing humanitarian assistance to victims of brutal communist regimes. He publicly urged his colleagues to “recommit to supporting critical programs” through USAID.

Yet when Musk went nuclear on the agency, the just-sworn-in secretary remained silent.

This past weekend, USAID’s website went offline. The blackout initially appeared to be part of Trump’s broader purge of government data — but then Musk vowed to shutter the agency entirely, apparently with Trump’s blessing. One of Musk’s underlings told the 10,000 or so USAID staff that the building would be closed on Monday.

Meanwhile, representatives of the Department of Governmental Efficiency pushed their way into the agency and demanded access to personnel files and security data, “including classified systems beyond the security level of at least some of the DOGE employees,” NBC News reported. John Voorhees, the agency’s director of security, and his deputy Brian McGill refused. The DOGErs then threatened to bring in U.S. marshals. These heroes still refused.

They have now been placed on administrative leave.

On Monday, Rubio belatedly announced that he was taking control of USAID, assuming it continues to exist. Meanwhile, Rubio has nothing to say about Trump’s decision to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans who have been living and working in this country lawfully. They are now vulnerable to deportation back to their repressive homeland — a fate Rubio described in 2022 as a “death sentence.”

Our top diplomat likewise has had little to say about our crumbling relationships with important allies across the Americas. Nor does he appear to have enough influence, or perhaps backbone, to block another State Department nominee who wants to hand Taiwan, a key U.S. ally, to China and has stated, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”

The “adults in the room” sometimes failed in Trump’s first term. Now, they’re not even pretending to try.

By Catherine Rampell

Catherine Rampell is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post. She frequently covers economics, public policy, immigration and politics, with a special emphasis on data-driven journalism. Before joining The Post, she wrote about economics and theater for the New York Times. follow on X@crampell