Entitlements: DOGE goes after Social Security

Elon Musk is “trying to convince Americans that our Social Security system is overrun by massive fraud,” said Nancy Altman in The Hill. He’s sent his DOGE minions in and come out with a claim that Social Security is paying out funds to millions of beneficiaries over 100 years old. That’s completely false, and in reality “the hardworking civil servants at the Social Security Administration are extremely diligent in tracking the deaths of beneficiaries.” But finding fraud isn’t DOGE’s real aim here. “Musk has made no secret of his disdain for our Social Security system.” It’s the same disdain that a few ultra-wealthy conservatives have expressed for decades. The difference is that now President Trump “is giving Musk the power to steal our earned benefits.”

Musk’s assertions about outrageous Social Security fraud have been almost instantly debunked, said Philip Bump in The Washington Post. Last week, Musk tweeted that DOGE had found records of Social Security recipients who claimed to be as old as 150. “It didn’t take long for other tech guys to point out” that this was obviously “a data error in an old system.” In 2023, the department’s inspector general released a report on the same thing: “There are millions of probably-dead people in the SSA system.” However, only 13 beneficiaries aged 112 or older were being sent checks. “But Musk isn’t very interested in the truth.” He wants to create enough skepticism about Social Security that “all government funding will be rejected as dubious.”

Fraud or not, Social Security is like the Titanic heading toward an iceberg, said Star Parker in RealClearPolitics, and we’ve set it “on automatic pilot.” Our Founding Fathers “would be aghast that today practically every young American is forced to pay into a Social Security that cannot fiscally honor its promised benefits” by the time they retire. “We must free young Americans” from this tragic course. A year ago, 178 House Republicans proposed “modest adjustments to the retirement age” for future Social Security recipients, said Paul Brandus in MarketWatch. “The vast majority of those Republicans were re-elected in November.” Voters no longer see Social Security as untouchable, and “entitlements are on the table.”

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Musk’s bluster “would be less scary if not for other missteps,” said Gabriel Rubin in Reuters. DOGE has already made the government stumble into blunders like mistakenly firing critical nuclear safety workers, who then had to be urgently rehired. Giving Musk the power to “meddle” with Social Security risks similar mistakes that could cut off payments to the program’s 69 million recipients—many of whom rely on the benefit. Even if you want changes to Social Security, brazenly sowing doubt about the program with baseless claims of fraud “is playing with fire.”