Elon Musk is coming for your Social Security
The only efficiency Elon Musk cares about is how efficiently he can take your money to line his own pockets. Despite President Trump’s campaign promises, Musk is coming after your earned Social Security benefits.
President Dwight Eisenhower, Republican and war hero, could have been talking about Musk when he warned in 1954 of a handful of “Texas oil millionaires" attempting to abolish Social Security. "Their number is negligible and they are stupid,” he wrote.
Musk has made no secret of his disdain for our Social Security system. In just the last few weeks, he has used his gigantic platform to spread outrageous lies about Social Security.
Unlike the extremely rich, stupid men to whom Eisenhower was referring, Musk is, unfortunately, not just ignorant. Trump is giving him the power to steal our earned benefits. Musk is drawing on an old playbook of claiming that the government in general, and Social Security in particular, is full of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Then, when he steals your benefits, he will claim that he is simply cutting waste.
Both Musk’s ignorance and his anti-Social Security playbook were on full display Tuesday, when the shadow president talked to reporters in the Oval Office. In trying to convince us that our extremely efficient Social Security system is rife with fraud, he unknowingly proved how economical its administration is, when he asserted, “just cursory examination of Social Security and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old.”
This is not so. The hardworking civil servants at the Social Security Administration are extremely diligent in tracking the deaths of beneficiaries. Social Security spends millions of dollars every year to purchase the automated death data of state vital records agencies.
And Social Security provides a lump sum death benefit, in part to encourage the families of beneficiaries to report their deaths promptly. When beneficiaries die, their benefits are immediately terminated. Eligible survivors, if any, start to receive the benefits their loved ones have earned for them.
It is important to recognize that what Musk and others label “waste” is usually unavoidable because of the way politicians have drafted our laws. For example, Social Security benefits are paid in the month following the month that they are due. That means that if you receive your benefit and then die later that same month, that is considered an overpayment — even when the death is immediately reported and the benefits immediately cancelled. The law requires the Social Security Administration to claw back those benefits from the grieving survivors — which it routinely does.
No one born 150 years ago is still receiving benefits. But here is where Musk is showing his ignorance: Let’s take the example of a person who is issued a Social Security card as an infant and dies at age 10, never having received a penny of benefits. Social Security doesn’t waste taxpayer dollars finding that information and cancelling their Social Security number — this would be prohibitively expensive and wasteful.
Moreover, most adults who die leave behind spouses and children, including adult disabled children, who may be eligible for benefits for many years based on the decedent's earnings record. Therefore, that record may remain active for a very long time. For example, the last person to receive a Civil War pension was a veteran’s disabled daughter, who died less than five years ago — in 2020.
Disturbingly, the reason Musk was able to assert the ignorant claim about 150-year-olds is that he has accessed our personal data. Because Musk has access to the Treasury's payments system, he has the Social Security numbers of every worker and Social Security beneficiary. He also has our bank account numbers, and other sensitive, private information.
Musk and his minions are reportedly now not just at the Treasury but also at Social Security's headquarters in Baltimore. That means they may already have access to how much a person has ever earned, at what job, and when, how old they are, their marital status and more. Musk may also have access to the medical records of every single one of the millions of Americans who have applied for disability benefits. No unelected, unconfirmed ideologue should be anywhere near those records, especially not the wealthiest man in the world, given his numerous conflicts of interest.
What is going on should be obvious. Musk wants to cut off your benefits and then have Congress use the savings to give himself a gigantic tax cut. But Social Security is incredibly popular, so he can’t be open about his intentions. Instead, he is trying to convince Americans that our Social Security system is overrun with massive fraud. The truth is the opposite.
Less than 1 percent of Social Security payments are improper. And remember, that already-low percentage includes all the beneficiaries who receive a proper benefit but then die in the same month.
Given that these and all other improper payments constitute less than 1 percent of all payments made, those that are the result of fraud are vanishingly small. This is in sharp contrast to private insurance. Indeed, the American Academy of Actuaries issued a report just last September about private insurance and concluded that “insurance fraud is widespread.”
Ironically, the best way to stop improper payments — including those vanishingly few that result from fraud — is to adequately staff the Social Security Administration. Face-to-face transactions at your local Social Security field office will catch fraudsters. Online transactions generally won’t.
Unfortunately, your local Social Security office will be closing. Musk has instructed the General Services Administration to terminate all federal office leases, including every Social Security office and every post office.
Musk will do whatever it takes to avoid paying his fair share and enrich himself at our expense. He has his eyes on our Social Security. Lies about fraud might shake people’s confidence, but they are unlikely to shake people’s support for Social Security.
His rummaging around in our private information is unprecedented. It is hard to know what he has in mind or how to stop him. But there is one thing we absolutely can stop.
We can stop Congress from cutting our benefits. We must demand that every member of Congress stand up to Musk’s cynical efforts to steal our earned Social Security benefits while giving himself and other billionaires a hefty tax cut.
Every single member of Congress must publicly pledge that they will keep the promises Trump made on the campaign trail. That means not one penny in cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Every member of Congress must tell Musk and Trump: Hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Nancy Altman is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition.
Topics
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