Susan is reluctant to pay her taxes.
Worried about the safety of her money and her 96-year-old mother’s Social Security, given the federal Department of Government Efficiency’s recent access to the U.S. Treasury, the Bridgewater resident said she’s also considering freezing credit and changing bank account numbers.
Calling into a telephone town hall on Friday, she asked her new representative in Congress, Maggie Goodlander, what she should do and how Congress is working to fix the situation. Although she’s appreciative of congressional efforts to pass legislation preventing a similar infringement from happening again, Susan said the damage is already done.
“The horse is kind of already out of the barn in that the DOGE team has already been into the Treasury and already has all of our information,” Susan said.
A federal judge on Saturday blocked DOGE from further accessing sensitive information in the U.S. Treasury Department.
Goodlander responded to Susan like she did to most callers who aired their frustrations and concerns around recent actions from the Trump administration — with a pledge that she’s doing her best to protect the people of New Hampshire, and fighting for transparency.
“I am using every tool I’ve got to try to get to the bottom of how we can protect the system,” Goodlander said. “We have sent oversight letters to every relevant department and agency.”
Congress is also putting together a Taxpayer Data Protection Act, she said, which would ensure that anyone who accesses the payment system has the necessary experience and security clearance.
“This has been called into question,” Goodlander said. “We’ve got to make sure that people who have access to the system have made the proper ethics commitments, that they don’t have conflicts of interest, that they’ve been properly trained on cyber security.”
As of that town hall, Goodlander had spent just 35 days on the job. Much of her time in office so far, she said, has been spent talking with local leaders and people like Susan who are seeking information on what’s affected by President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders, the impending tariffs on Canada and the stymied federal funding freeze.
She spent about a week traveling New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District at the end of January, visiting local government leaders, nonprofits and others who face uncertainty with the federal government.
“Really core constitutional questions have been called,” Goodlander said. “These are questions that aren’t academic. They’ve had real-life impacts on real people in our district.”
In her first few weeks, she said she’s had to get “creative” to be effective. She sits on the Small Business Committee and the Armed Services Committee, both of which she said allow opportunities to work on bipartisan legislation.
Goodlander crossed the party line in her first vote, joining Republicans to support the Laken Riley Act, which requires detaining of undocumented immigrants who are charged with any violent or theft-related crimes. She voted for it alongside U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas and 46 other Democrats.
It’s “not a perfect bill,” Goodlander said, but she wants to work on more immigration reform, including proper funding for immigration courts and enforcement, as well as a pathway for people to earn citizenship.
“Comprehensive can be the enemy of progress,” she said. “I think we have to be flexible in how we advance solutions as they come, but I’m looking for ways to build support around those core ideas.”
Despite Republican control of Congress and the chaos of the past few weeks, Goodlander said it wasn’t unexpected – she knew the potential challenges when she ran for office, and she hopes to be effective by working with other lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
“Sometimes you’re dealt a hand that’s not the ideal hand, but you make the best of it,” she said.
Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and Concord Monitor in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.
