Actions of DOGE
Based on a report that DOGE plans to audit the Social Security Administration, Congressman Dan Goldman (D–NY) claims that “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to take away your hard-earned Social Security benefits.”
IN FACT, Trump is using DOGE to root out fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer money. The SSA has significant amounts of that, like the following for example:
- In 2022, the SSA made roughly $2.0 billion in fraudulent and other improper overpayments—enough to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.
- Under a policy called “administrative finality,” once the SSA mistakenly overpays a beneficiary for more than four years, it does not recover past overpayments and deliberately continues to make future overpayments excepting cases of fraud.
- A Government Accountability Office investigation found that the SSA sent roughly 7,000 federal employees disability benefits in 2008 while they were also receiving wages from federal jobs.
- A Government Accountability Office investigation found that the SSA sent 71,688 Obama “stimulus” checks to people who were deceased, including 63,481 people whose deaths had already been reported to the SSA and 8,000 dead people who were born before the oldest living person in the United States.
