I’m in a similar position as you describe, perspective-wise, and would also like to understand the situation better.
I do think there are good reasons why someone should maybe have direct access to some of these systems, though probably not as a lone individual. I seem to remember a few government shutdown/debt ceiling fight/whatever crises ago, there were articles about how there were fundamentally no systems in place to control or prioritize which bills got paid and which didn’t. Money came into the treasury, money left to pay for things, first in first out. The claim I remember being repeated was that first, this was a result of legacy systems, and second, because all the money was authorized by law to be spent it might be illegal to withhold or deprioritize it. Which is also an insane system—there should be a way to say “Pay the White House electric bill, make the florist wait.” But to a first approximation, that can’t easily be fixed without some unelected people having more authority than you’d normally feel comfortable with them using, which is a risk even if you do it well.
I’m in a similar position as you describe, perspective-wise, and would also like to understand the situation better.
I do think there are good reasons why someone should maybe have direct access to some of these systems, though probably not as a lone individual. I seem to remember a few government shutdown/debt ceiling fight/whatever crises ago, there were articles about how there were fundamentally no systems in place to control or prioritize which bills got paid and which didn’t. Money came into the treasury, money left to pay for things, first in first out. The claim I remember being repeated was that first, this was a result of legacy systems, and second, because all the money was authorized by law to be spent it might be illegal to withhold or deprioritize it. Which is also an insane system—there should be a way to say “Pay the White House electric bill, make the florist wait.” But to a first approximation, that can’t easily be fixed without some unelected people having more authority than you’d normally feel comfortable with them using, which is a risk even if you do it well.