Fresh off its USAID victory, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has set its sights on exposing and stopping Social Security fraud. But instead of working with DOGE and congressional Republicans to end the rampant abuse of American seniors’ retirement benefits, Democrats are instead spreading blatant misinformation by claiming that the Trump administration is aiming to gut the program altogether.
Fox News first reported late last week that the Social Security Administration (SSA) was next on DOGE’s list of agencies to audit. “We’ve got people [receiving benefits] that are 150 years old,” Musk told members of the press earlier this week. “I think they’re probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous, one of the two,” he joked.
Liberals have predictably descended into a fit of manufactured outrage at the news, casting DOGE’s efforts to eliminate fraud as a ploy to cut legitimate benefit payments. House and Senate Democrats held a press conference outside SSA’s headquarters in Baltimore earlier this week accusing Musk of “conducting illegal raids on federal agencies with his DOGE crew.”
“We have one simple message, which is: Elon Musk, keep your hands off of our Social Security,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said at the top of the press conference. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) was even more direct in a post on X, writing that “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to take away your hard-earned Social Security benefits.”
But as Trump, Musk, and congressional Republicans have repeatedly made clear, DOGE has precisely the opposite mission. By finally tackling fraud and administrative errors resulting in overpayments, DOGE has created real momentum toward addressing the solvency crisis that has plagued the Social Security program for decades – thereby protecting seniors’ benefits.
“The goal of auditing the Social Security Administration is to stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans,” Musk posted on X on Monday. “That’s it. That’s the goal. End of story.”
According to the SSA inspector general’s office, from FY 2015 through FY 2022, the agency made “nearly $72 billion in improper payments, most of which were overpayments.” Moreover, “at the end of FY 2023, SSA had an uncollected overpayment balance of $23 billion.”
Another report from nonprofit research institute Just Facts found that SSA handed out $2 billion in fraudulent or improper payments in 2022 – enough “to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.”
DOGE’s early findings, however, suggest that the scale of the abuse of the Social Security system may be even larger than that. “At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc.) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR,” Musk posted on X on Tuesday. “Just learned that the social security database is not de-duplicated, meaning you can have the same SSN many times over, which further enables MASSIVE FRAUD!! Your tax dollars are being stolen,” he added in another post.
That fraud and mountain of improper payments were major topics of discussion on Wednesday during the first hearing of the new House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (the DOGE subcommittee), chaired by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). AMAC President and CEO Rebecca Weber submitted an official written statement for the hearing, applauding the subcommittee for “taking President Trump’s direction to ‘strengthen Social Security’ by rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse within the Social Security system seriously.”
“Millions of seniors have worked hard their entire lives, paying into Social Security with the expectation that these benefits will be there when they retire,” Weber continued. “Unfortunately, widespread inefficiencies, improper payments, and fraudulent activities threaten to undermine the program’s future and weaken this critical safety net for those who depend on it most.”
Indeed, according to a 2024 SSA report released last May, the combined Social Security trust funds are projected to be depleted by 2035. While more reforms are needed to stave off this looming funding shortfall, addressing fraudulent and improper payments is a crucial step toward ensuring seniors continue to receive the benefits they have earned.
It’s not just Social Security, either. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), improper payments totaled a staggering $236 billion in FY 2023, the last year for which data is available. Medicare – which is also facing an insolvency crisis – was one of the worst offenders, with $51.1 billion in improper payments, or 22 percent of total payment errors. Medicaid added another $50.3 billion.
This is far from a new problem – GAO puts the price tag of improper payments over the past 20 fiscal years at $2.7 trillion. But while both parties have paid lip service to stopping waste, fraud, and abuse in the past, Trump and the DOGE team are the first to take concrete steps to systematically audit spending and then institute major funding cuts.
Democrats can drag their feet and attempt to mislead the public all they want. But Trump and DOGE don’t appear ready to back down anytime soon.
Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
Truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.
The article’s final paragraph says it all — TIME TO ELIMINATE THE FRAUD, WASTE AND ABUSE in the government hierarchy. Voters need to vote out the idiots who are abusing their government powers for themselves.
No compromise.
No “reaching across the aisle”.
Steamroll the corrupt Democrats.
Enough is enough. Give no quarter.
Semper Vigilans.
Fear mongering to the seniors is what the Democrats are doing. Why would they disagree with finding the fraud and corruptness in order to keep Social Security solvent? Seems pretty basic. They’ve got something to hide and are afraid it will be discovered.
My 150-year-old great-great-great-great grandmother is definitely concerned!
I could not be happier to see this. I will never understand why the Dems would not like to eliminate fraud. Many of them received Social Security benefits as well as us Independents and Republicans.
Thank you President Trump for exposing all this corruption that has been like a cancer to our wonderful country for years. Root out all this mismanagement and right this ship of ours.
Democrats, please go sit down and just shut up. You’ve ruined enough with your greed.
Adults are in charge now.
So I guess that the democrats think the 150 year olds are still kicking and that finding waste and fraud in the system somehow effect our benefits. Well they do. Just maybe the funds won’t run out as fast as predicted.
I am constantly amazed at Democrats fighting for their own corruption! If they didn’t fight so hard for their own corruption, our country might be in better shape instead of having a bunch of wealthy politicians!!! Maybe the rest of us could have a better life if they didn’t have such a great life at our expense!!!!
It is hard for me to believe that the SS administration is so inept that they continue to make payments to a 150-year old person? I assume they will get all of the money back from the time of death of this person & if they cannot, tell us why?
It is my understanding that the congress are not receving benefits under the Social Security Adm.that the everyday worker pays into and receives their retirement funds. They have their own plan and if they were to follow the same program that we, the rest of us, perhaps there would be AUDITS to see what is really going on regarding ALL of the funds being dispersed!
DOGE must not forget to target the USPS for waste, fraud, abuse and lack of entrepreneurial common sense. There is no excuse such a massive enterprise should be losing money, especially when the responsible “overseers” are so involved in advantaging the system for their own commercial benefit. It has been reported (Nov. 14, 2024) that the USPS “… lost $9.5 billion….in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30,” and “…11 straight years of financial loss…” (covered by U.S taxpayers, as usual). Just saw an ad promoting seven-cent business postcards. Every day, the mailbox carries an average of five political and/or fund-raising non-profit “letters” reaching out for donations and contributions to their various “causes” at Bulk Mail Rates—like, eight cents an ounce. First rate mail rates for a simple citizen’s letter is seventy-three cents an ounce. Where does the “burden” of loss originate? Favorable rates for special causes, enterprises and political people.
Go gettum, DOGE!
Finally, an administration willing to put action to words. We’ve had only words for decades. The action is unfolding so fast it’s hard to keep up. But welcome. I hope the liberal courts aren’t allowed to gum up the works, they are trying.
The Damnocraps are well beyond being OUT OF TOUCH with Americans. And they refuse to abandon their 75+-years of using and screaming the SAME OLD FEAR-MONGERING LIES, RACE-BAITING EVERYTHING, ‘PHOBIA’ ACCUSING, AND NAME CALLING ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THEIR WARPED, EVIL AND PERVERTED IDEOLOGY.
Well guess what Dems. Americans are on to you and it ain’t gonna work any longer. Your far left-wing progressive, socialist commie party is DEAD. Your ‘new’ FAILED platform stands on the following: Supporting illegals forever, your love of crime, drugs, filth, and homelessness in our streets, America-LAST, veterans-last, no end to higher taxes, bankrupt the working class to support the illegals, rapists, sex, drug and human traffickers, the annual murdering of millions of babies, reward the LAZY, penalize the WORKING, support Cancel Culture, support failed public education, support men in women sports, and so many, many other INSANE ISSUES. In other words, their party is the party from HELL.
Might be one good thing if Musk does look at SS fund, is that both Musk & Trump will realize how many millions of Americans have SS benefits as their primary source of income to live on. Also, both of them will realize that some retired Americans are living on incomes of $2,000 or less per month. For the math, that is $24 K per year! The SS fund was started in 1935 to provide some income to retirees, but not intended to be the sole source of retirement income.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) are hypocrites for claiming the need to protect SS while vilifying Trump and Musk in their statements. Just another example of why a Convention of States (COS) is needed to term limit corrupt Officials in our government. Another thing that needs to change in our government is elected Officials should not be allowed to decide for themselves when they need a pay raise. Their bosses, the American Taxpayers, should be the ones to decide whether our taxes should be used to give these worthless employees a raise.
The SS Trust Fund had+ $2.3 Trillion surplus & is a separate fund that the govt. cannot take money out of except as a loan. The govt. is paying a huge amount of interest on these loans every year as a result. Write Congress & tell them to keep this fund separate and pass bills to solidify this fund so that it continues past year 2034. Congress needs to quit kicking this problem down the road to the next generation.
The U.S. treasure must have been a precious one if the America had not spent it for those rubbish expenses during such a lengthening period.
D.O.G.E. is saving our country now. Thank you very much, Elon Musk and his departmental members.
If a dead can vote, why would a 150 years old not collect? Until someone is held accountable, responsible and receives a proper sentence the abuse will continue on collecting and distributing sides..
Every Day, Every American should thank the good Lord for Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Elon Musk and the many others working with them to put a stop to the plundering of honest, tax paying workers who have been supporting all of these fraudulent policies. I knew there were problems in Washington D. C. But the figures they are now quoting are absolutely mind boggling! I wondered (but suspected) how so many ‘Government Employees’ got so rich while in Office. It’s not the salary, it’s the fringe benefits that ices the cake! This has been going on since…Forever? I applaud President Trump and his Crew for all that they have done & for all that is upcoming. They have our Full Support! May God Bless every single, Honest, one of them, they’re always in my prayers!
Those Dems are a bunch of big-mouth nut jobs going around gov’t agencies WITH MEDIA because they aren’t interested in “doing the peoples’ work”. They lie, cheat, and could care less about what The People want. The missing one is Pelosi. But Waters is even more disgusting.
They all need to be recalled to get them out of Congress because they are worthless to the country. When was the last time you saw a GOP group from Congress out protesting, screaming, advocating for “fighting in the streets”?
As Elon Musk goes after theft and fraud at Social Security, only corrupt democrats would attack him as trying to gut the program. It is sad they are spreading so many lies, misinformation, and disinformation to what’s left of their base.
What if anything was done to claw back these improper payments? Did the inspector general do anything about them? Why or why not? If the Inspector General did nothing about these improper payments, was he or she fired? Why or why not?
Trump should be careful not to lose more of the 150 year old vote… Democrats already have that one locked!
Hey, Social Security, it’s time to raise the maximum amount you can earn when continuing to work before reaching full retirement age (FRA). My benefits are cut in half (i.e., suspended for six months) because this amount hasn’t been seriously adjusted in 40 years. Yes, my benefits will be adjusted higher once I reach FRA but that’s still a few years away.
we should use those 87000 IRS agents to track down where the payments are going to see if they are legit.
WOW! Go DOGE GO! Dems are going to scream all they want about anything the Trump admin does, but what is the first thing any smart person does when funds are low? They cut out wasteful spending. It’s great to have business savvy people in charge finally.
I pray that God will give you strength and the backbone to continue the battle
The Dems have to spread false and misleading lies to protect their possible kickbacks. They never stop and their propaganda machine will continue to crank out lies to those dumb enough to believe.
President Trump and Elon must expose all Democrats and Republicans who are committing Social Security Fraud to people who should not be receiving benefits. Also, these politicians committing need to be prosecuted by honest judges who stand by the law and not by liberal wok judges. There is far too much waste and abuse in government for far too long. The American voters need to be informed by honest politicians, honest news media, and honest judges who follow the law and not by wok judges, politicians, and the media.
The only way to totally eliminate all fraud and abuse is to rid congress of Democrats. They are far too interested in buying votes by whatever means necessary, and couldn’t care less about the voters, legal residents and citizen.
The only ones that don’t want SSI cleaned up are the ones getting extra money from our tax dollars. Well I say let them kick and scream all they want because they are theives. If this is cleaned up, there will be SSI money for many years to come.
The first comment made by Sen. Chris Van Hollen was wrong. It is the American Peoples money not Theirs!
It is public knowledge that 17 trillion dollars was”BORROWED” from Social Security with a promise to repay. But not 1 penny has been repaid. So I am hoping the DOGE can find where Social Security has been going. Just my opinion.
The federal government has been rife with fraud and corruption for a long time. I am glad to see someone is lighting the corners where the fraud has been hiding.
We know better than Dem lies.
I support Musk 100%. He’s not out to steal SS numbers — he’s worth around $400 billion dollars. The Dems need to buckle up and help us save tax dollars.
It’s incredible that SSA and CMS are so inept or just don’t care about waste and fraud that billions of dollars of taxpayers money are lost. Both agencies had large divisions that are sopposed to monitor and stop fraud so they must be incompitent. And on top of this the democrat royalty seems to not care and is guilty of lying to the American people. This is why they lost the last election and will lose the next one. They are a shameful bunch of losers
One of the most abused programs at Social Security is the disabilty process. Hundreds of thousands applied (and got) disability payments during Obama’s disastrous reign. I had the chore of going to Soc Security and watched as people applied for Disability. Looked like a county food stamp/welfare with the average age of applicants in their 20’s and 30’s with multiple kids in tow.
A re-certification of disability status every 3-5 yrs would eliminate many of the fraudulent claims. And it seemed to be racially biased and that had to be disclosed on the application. The intent is to provide a safety net for truly disabled individuals, not as a welfare system at the national level. Billions in potential savings and it would make Social Security trusted once again.
Well there’s enough proof in the pudding for both Federal House and Senate members to share,especially the Rhinos of each political party.
Also this is a necessary step in putting Social security back to being solvent, obviously the social security administrators are incapable of their duties to keep fraudulent claims from taking place.
Enough is enough already let’s get the swamp cleaned up!
Anyone who is a representative or Senator has a build in retirement plan the lobbyist!
When I was trying to get my handicapped brother on Social Security and get him other aid, nearly every government office we went to was crowded with non-English speaking people. As far as I know, if you didn’t pay into SSA you shouldn’t be getting it. If you’re not a citizen, why should WE the people pay your aid when you’re here illegally? And fraud seems too easy to commit – apply at one agency for aid and get turned down for a specific reason – next agency, the person just lies about the issue and gets that aid, then waits a while and reapplies at the first agency and leaves out the reason they got turned down the first time. It would work better if there was ONE place you could apply for all government aid and that information was shared with all agencies. No chance to ‘customize’ your information to get ‘free’ money.
Trump, Musk, and their goal to reduce government waste and fraud is a daunting goal, but I’m cheering them on!
Dims play the game to rephrase the initiative to claim DOGE is aimed at stealing personal information and real SS benefit checks. Nothing is further from the truth and the Dims should be called out on it. In a real world the media would do that but we have a corrupt media driven by the LEFT owners in full support of the LEFT politicians. The scourge of our country!
They’re so scared now! I love it
I watched The Daily Show which showed this segment of Musk’s talk. I heard his references to people receiving Social Security Benefits who are 150 years old but for some reason are not widely known on record and being celebrated –Isn’t there a function that provides a way to get a special letter once one reaches 100 and going forth. I know that I have to provide a certified form every year to my pension fund to prove that I am still alive and most legitimate funeral homes when providing burial services do emphasize and include in their fee getting the required number of death certificates needed by the family if they don’t want the funeral some to send the notices to all the required (by law) places that need that death certificate. Social Security may allow the survivors to keep the last check depending on the date of the month when the person dies–very clearly stated on the website. So many of those “150-year-olds” still collecting may not be the actual person but one of their survivors cashing those checks. Also, there are a lot of people who think that because they only receive a Social Security check they don’t have to file federal tax or state tax forms. Some states require their residents to file to be considered a resident even if they owe no tax and may not be receiving a refund–NYS is one of them. The federal tax form must be filed by all even if all income received is a benefit like Social Security and unemployment or SNAP benefits. There’s no sharing of your Social Security number either. This is why so many people claimed they didn’t receive those checks given during the pandemic years.
“Spreading blatant misinformation”, along with taking money that’s obviously not theirs, is what “democrats” (who very evidently don’t believe in “democracy”) have ALWAYS DONE.
There should be ZERO surprise about their resistance to cooperating with DOGE, as DOGE represents the antithesis of the model of governance that “democrats” are willing to tolerate. The bottom line is that “Democrats” STEAL, LIE, AND OBSTRUCT. It’s who they are, and the main purpose for having re-elected Trump. Thank goodness we did !!!
It will take at least a year to uncover the bulk of the fraud and corruption gifted us by the dems, but it will be fully exposed.
Demoncraps fight against everything that might expose their lies and corruption! America should rejoice in exposing corruption, greed and crime. We may be able then to reduce some of our massive debt that Bidum created and have more to benefit America. Trump is Making America Great Again and Musk is helping him do that!
Interesting!! The REAL fraudulent people stealing from SS are trying to protect yet another agency they’ve corrupted by telling the American people that Pres Trump and DOGE want to take SS away from THEM, when in reality, DOGE wants to take them, the LEECHES out of our funds.
Go Trump and Musk