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.
