President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are running amok at the federal agency that administers Social Security benefits for some 70 million Americans. Earlier this month, Musk and his DOGE squad were granted access to data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) as part of a bogus campaign to root out “fraud” at the agency. Their intrusion into the workings of SSA escalated to an alarming new level when it was reported on Monday that the agency’s acting commissioner resigned, apparently over requests from the DOGE team for even more sensitive data—which may include claimants’ medical records, detailed work histories, and detailed family information. This is a ‘canary in a coal mine’ moment for anyone who cares about the integrity of our nation’s most popular social insurance program.
Trump and Musk are using allegations of “fraud” to justify interfering with Social Security—the program that Americans pay into and depend on for basic financial security upon retirement, disability, or the death of a family breadwinner. Musk and company are perpetrating the ultimate con: hoodwinking people into believing that improper payments and “fraud” are out of control in the programs that conservatives want to shrink, while (so far) ignoring legitimate waste, fraud, and abuse in myriad others.
On February 11, Musk wrote on X that he is “100% certain that the magnitude of fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid… etc.) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by far.” This is a laughable and undocumented claim, a cynical ploy to convince the American public, “See? These programs that are supposed to help people are rife with fraud. You are being ripped off!”
Let’s be clear: there is no massive fraud or abuse at the Social Security Administration (SSA), which pays benefits to seniors, people with disabilities, survivors, spouses, and children. According to the agency’s Office of the Inspector General, improper payments by the SSA are less than 1% of total benefits paid, and most of them are made in error, but not largely fraudulent.
The most troubling possibility, of course, is that Musk and DOGE are attempting to soften public support for the Social Security Administration so that they can dismantle the agency, just as they are doing at USAID.
No doubt, there is waste, fraud and abuse in every large federal program. The bigger the program, the greater the likelihood that a certain amount of money will be misspent. That is why there are myriad safeguards within the system, although Trump recently fired 17 Inspectors General across the federal government whose job it was to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse.
Elon Musk, head of Trump’s inaptly named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been given unprecedented access to the Social Security Administration, including the personal data of millions of beneficiaries. Musk may be Trump’s right-hand man and the richest guy in the world, but it’s safe to say he has no experience with administering the nation’s largest social insurance program. As a retired, long-term employee of SSA told me, “Musk and his staff know nothing about how Social Security works.”
AsProPublica reported, Musk’s crew consists largely of engineers, coders and programmers from his own corporate orbit with little to no knowledge about the actual workings of the federal government, and does not include a single professional auditor.
Ignorance of the system has not stopped the unelected billionaire from cherry-picking anecdotal instances of supposed “fraud” from the Social Security Administration’s database. (See Musk’s wholly unsubstantiated claim that 150-year-olds are receiving Social Security benefits.) The Economist magazine called Musk’s assertions “baseless and unfounded.”
Former SSA employees say that the agency already has systems in place to protect taxpayers’ money. “SSA has always worked really hard to root out improper payments, of which fraud is a small fraction. And there is transparency on how they report on it and what they’re doing about it,” says Kathleen Romig, who took a leave of absence from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to work at SSA under former Commissioner Martin O’Malley.
Romig says that Commissioner O’Malley held biweekly staff meetings about improper payments and how to reduce them, including “when those payments were a result of fraud, so they could be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted.”
“There are ways to take this issue seriously,” Romig says. “Trump and Musk are doing the opposite, making wild accusations and removing the safeguards that we have against fraud.”
In fact, SSA has done a noble job administering the nation’s largest social insurance program amid serious funding shortfalls. The agency has not received adequate funding from Congress since the Tea Party era. Staffing is at a 50-year low at year-low at a time when 10,000 baby boomers are reaching retirement age every day. The SSA, under Commissioner O’Malley, made admirable strides to improve customer service and reduce overpayments. We give the incoming commissioner, Frank Bisignano, the benefit of the doubt that he will continue those efforts in good faith.
The last thing SSA needs is Elon Musk and his DOGE squad interfering with the administration of Social Security benefits. Jacob Leibenluft, a former Treasury Department official, released a paper about the threats posed by DOGE to Social Security and other federal programs, including the potential for illegal withholding of benefits; putting sensitive personal data in the hands of individuals who shouldn’t have access to it; and the risk of “breaking the system” in ways that could inadvertently delay or stop payments from arriving on time.
The most troubling possibility, of course, is that Musk and DOGE are attempting to soften public support for the Social Security Administration so that they can dismantle the agency, just as they are doing at
USAID. In December, Musk (the owner of the social media platform X)
amplified a post by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) that referred to Social Security as a “Ponzi Scheme” and called the program “government dependency at its worst.” Other prominent Republicans (including the
House GOP Study Committee) have proposed cutting Social Security. Worse yet, DOGE’s interference in the workings of SSA blatantly undermines President’s Trump’s promise to the American public “not to touch” Social Security. His and Musk’s fingerprints are all over it now, and they will own any damage done to America's most popular federal program.
Update: This piece has been updated from its original to account for the resignation of the Social Security Administration's Acting Commissioner.
