Elon Musk has once again placed himself at the centre of the political and social debate. The tycoon and owner of X (formerly Twitter) has dropped a news bomb that has left the public in the United States perplexed: according to him, millions of deceased people continue to collect Social Security benefits, generating a fraud of colossal proportions. His words have been blunt: “there is a whole generation of financial vampires who are draining the system without anyone doing anything.” Is this real? What do we know about this?
Earthquake in the federal authorities
Yes, this statement has set off all the alarms in Washington, and both the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been forced to immediately begin an investigation into the databases that exist in the Administration.
Is this a real scandal or just another episode in Musk’s media war against the federal government?
What does Musk say?
On the 17th, Musk dropped the bombshell through a post on his X profile. In it, he published a table in which a relationship was established between the number of people in each age group who had checked the “Death” box in the database and it was false.
Official numbers: a real problem?
The idea that millions of deceased people are still receiving Social Security checks is shocking, but it’s not new…
A report from the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General in 2023 revealed that there are 18.9 million Social Security numbers linked to people born in 1920 or earlier who have not been officially recorded as deceased, but are aware of it and before facing a problem of lack of control are disqualified from receiving any type of payment (logically)
In fact, according to this same report, of those 18.9 million unupdated records, only 44,000 people would be collecting benefits, which represents a relatively low number within the US pension system.
Who is investigating and what will be the consequences?
DOGE has announced that it will thoroughly review the SSA database to clarify whether there is negligence, but the investigation has also raised concerns about whether there have been possible leaks of sensitive information, as some critics fear that Musk is using his influence to access confidential data without proper controls.
Meanwhile, from the White House, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary of the Trump administration, has tried to defuse the situation by assuring that the investigation will not affect the payments to retirees who are already receiving them and that the only objective of this investigation is to prevent public funds from being wasted.
But is there fraud or not?
The answer is no, as we said before, what has happened is a misunderstanding. The SSA establishes the death status in the master death file, but, having digitized the data, many of those born before 1920 had been left in a “limbo” but no, they were not receiving money from social security nor wasting public funds, their death had simply not been registered.
What’s up with Musk and Social Security?
Well, as reported in various media, Musk’s DOGE has tried to privately access Social Security data, and the acting SSA commissioner resigned last weekend, which has only added fuel to the fire of the matter, however, Musk is on “a tightrope” because he has had several “beefs” with Social Security, so it would not be surprising if he is trying to discredit the administration through this.
On the part of Trump’s press, they accused Musk of instilling fear in the population (because many of our elders believed that they were going to lose their social pension) and that no one should be afraid of losing their payments because the tycoon wants to review the data.