Senate Republicans on Tuesday said they are open to the idea of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) accessing the IRS’s sensitive taxpayer information, as long as there are guardrails in place.

Reports emerged over the weekend that a member of Musk’s team at DOGE was attempting to access that information — which includes Social Security numbers, tax returns and banking information — as his team trains their government-cutting focus on another entity.

But Senate Republicans on Tuesday said that while some of them have concerns, the push to streamline and scrutinize an agency the GOP has been critical of is worth it.

“How many employees are there at the IRS?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, pointing to the hiring of thousands of employees via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). “There are thousands of employees at the IRS that already have access to our tax data. Does that concern you? I mean someone’s got to have access to them.”

“Mr. Musk has a top secret security clearance and he’s been authorized by the president,” Kennedy continued. “It’s against the law to divulge that information and you can be prosecuted severely, whether it’s Mr. Musk or a normal rank-and-file IRS employee.”

The new push at the IRS comes amid a spate of firings and layoffs at........

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