WASHINGTON — Social Safety is the electrified third rail of American politics, and now Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his band of 20-something acolytes are reaching for it.
The Division of Authorities Effectivity, Musk’s cost-cutting group, arrived on the Social Safety Administration over the weekend. Below stress, the company’s appearing head resigned, whereas Musk falsely claimed it fraudulently points advantages to tens of millions of people who find themselves greater than 100 years outdated.
“This could be the most important fraud in historical past,” Musk wrote in a follow-up post on Monday.
Musk’s remark seems to have stemmed from a misunderstanding of the company’s information — which do embody Social Safety numbers for tens of millions of people who find themselves too outdated to be alive, however don’t present them getting advantages. And Musk ignored that authorities watchdog businesses have repeatedly probed the Social Safety program and have discovered no such huge fraud.
President Donald Trump picked up the baseless allegation on Tuesday, saying he puzzled who was getting the cash supposedly dished out to People greater than 150 years outdated.
“In case you take all of these tens of millions of individuals off Social Safety, the entire sudden we now have a really highly effective Social Safety, with folks which can be 80 and 70 and 90, however not 200,” he said.
The Social Safety Administration’s appearing director resigned Sunday within the face of obvious calls for for entry to delicate SSA info from Musk’s minions, according to the Washington Post. An analogous ouster occurred final week on the Treasury Division over entry to IRS information, prompting a lawsuit from taxpayer advocates.
Social Safety could also be a riskier goal than the IRS, the Division of Schooling or the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth, the final of which Musk bragged about feeding right into a wooden chipper. Threatening modifications to Social Safety’s in style retirement program, which pays the payments for greater than 50 million older People every month, famously started former President George W. Bush’s lengthy slide into unpopularity following the 2004 elections.
Trump stated on the marketing campaign path that he wouldn’t contact Social Safety advantages. That place marked a break with previous GOP orthodoxy, and was a key cause working-class voters noticed him as comparatively reasonable.
Martin O’Malley, who ran the Social Safety Administration underneath former president Joe Biden, warned that Musk’s foray into the Social Safety Administration’s methods might truly trigger folks to overlook funds.
“At this price, they are going to break it. And they’re going to break it quick, and there will likely be an interruption of advantages,” O’Malley instructed the Washington Put up.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Safety Works, a liberal group that advocates in opposition to cuts to advantages, stated Musk appeared to be setting the stage for programmatic cuts.
“He desires to undermine confidence and persuade those that there’s fraud so when advantages are lower, they’re not reducing advantages, they’re reducing fraud and waste,” Altman instructed HuffPost.
Democrats pilloried Musk and Trump on Tuesday over the resignation of the SSA’s appearing director.
“It ought to alarm all People that Donald Trump is prepared to push out anybody who doesn’t present strict obedience to an unelected, unaccountable billionaire,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) stated. “This has nothing to do with ‘authorities effectivity’ and every thing to do with guaranteeing the billionaire class controls the levers of energy with no guardrails or accountability.”
HuffPost readers: Are you a federal worker with perception into what’s occurring at SSA? Electronic mail arthur@huffpost.com.
The SSA’s press workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday. White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday the White Home suspected fraud on the company and that advantages wouldn’t be affected for individuals who paid into the system “truthfully.”
As for the fraud Musk claimed to have recognized, the SSA’s inspector common’s workplace, an impartial investigative company, has issued a minimum of two reviews about “numberholders age 100 or older.” The inspector common found in its July 2023 report that the SSA lacks dying information for 18 million such folks as a result of the people died earlier than the federal government adopted its digital system for reporting deaths.
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The inspector common urged SSA to repair the info anyway utilizing accessible info, for the reason that outdated Social Safety numbers might doubtlessly be utilized by fraudsters. The company refused, saying it might be a waste of cash since no improper funds had been going out.
“Correcting information for nonbeneficiaries would divert sources from work essential to administer and handle our applications, which we can’t afford,” Social Safety stated in its response to the IG report.
In different phrases, the company stated the repair wouldn’t enhance authorities effectivity.
