Re: President Trump 2.0
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Originally Posted by Pierre
(Post 36193395)
Oh……..the deflection.
Did they put forward the “vast evidence” for scrutiny or not? Or was it an unverifiable statement?
Your answer?
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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doge...y?id=119564143
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Concerns that DOGE might mistake legitimate payments as fraudulent was evident earlier this week when Trump declared in his speech to Congress that there were millions of dead people still collecting Social Security checks.
But that isn't accurate.
According to a 2023 report by the SSA inspector general, there are millions of people older than 100 included in a separate "master death file," but "almost none" of them still receive benefits. The agency said fixing the file would cost between $5 million and $10 million.
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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/musk...y?id=118960821
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Musk misreads Social Security data, millions of dead people not getting benefits, experts say
Musk has implied 150-year-olds are getting checks but experts say he’s mistaken.
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https://wapo.st/4iZPRiP
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Why DOGE is struggling to find fraud in Social Security
Claims of massive problems by Elon Musk and President Trump are at odds with the agency’s audits and reports.
Elon Musk put a big target on the Social Security Administration in the first weeks of the Trump administration, claiming it is plagued by “immense waste” and promising audits to root out “the extreme levels of fraud.” President Donald Trump said during his joint address to Congress earlier this month that Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service was already “identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” at the agency.
But some of the biggest examples of allegedly wasteful spending held up by Musk and DOGE so far have been overblown or inaccurate. Musk’s assertion that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security benefits was so off-base that it had to be tamped down by the agency’s acting head, who had been promoted because of his willingness to cooperate with DOGE. “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” acting Social Security commissioner Lee Dudek said.
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But less than 1 percent of Social Security’s payments in recent years were determined to be improper — often the result of an accidental oversight or change in benefit status, according to a report last year by the agency’s inspector general. That works out to about $9 billion a year, and more than two-thirds of the mistaken payments were eventually clawed back. Another agency audit, which looked only at payments to retired workers, survivors and people with disabilities, found fraud was listed as the cause behind just 3 percent of improper benefit payments.
Despite the flood of money flowing through it, Social Security didn’t make a 2024 list by the Government Accountability Office, the legislative branch’s nonpartisan watchdog, detailing the 16 agencies with improper payment rates of at least 10 percent. That report further found that 80 percent of all improper payments were due to just five government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid — but not Social Security.
“The wild claims they are making — I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kathleen Romig, a former analyst and senior adviser at the agency, said of DOGE and Musk.
Social Security is among the most scrutinized and audited agencies in government, with frequent probes by its 500-person Office of Inspector General. It pays outside auditors to examine its books. Congress grills agency officials. Last year, a major focus in congressional hearings led by the GOP wasn’t waste or fraud — it was about Social Security being too aggressive in clawing back accidental benefit overpayments
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On social media, Musk alleged that more than 20 million Americans over age 100 receive Social Security checks, derisively describing it as “a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”
But those claims are not backed up by agency data. Officials said they showed a misunderstanding of Social Security’s databases.
The agency has millions of people in its databases who lack recorded dates of death — the result of old computer systems and events that are decades in the past. That doesn’t mean they are getting checks. Social Security auditors in 2023 reported that 98 percent of those without recorded dates of death were not receiving agency benefits and were known to be deceased. Agency officials said it was costlier and riskier to update the records than to do nothing.
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https://www.wired.com/story/elon-mus...-old-benefits/
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Musk, during the Oval Office press conference which was attended by his son, claimed the payments to 150-year-olds was part of the billions, maybe even tens of billions, in corruption and waste that his DOGE effort had already uncovered.
But just like condom shipments to Gaza or payments to Politico, Musk’s claims of Social Security fraud seems to be a gross misrepresentation of what’s actually happening and why.
In the same press conference where he made the remarks about 150-year-olds collecting Social Security benefits, Musk said his DOGE project would be “maximally transparent” with all savings being made posted to its website.
But when the site came online last week, not only was it just a repurposed Twitter feed with terrible security, it also lacked any details in a section dedicated to savings.
At the time, the site’s administrators claimed the savings section would be updated no later than Valentine’s Day. When that deadline came and went without any update, the administrator wrote: “Receipts coming over the weekend!” The page was briefly populated on Saturday before being taken down; at the time of publication on Monday, no receipts were posted.
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Feel free to provide evidence of the "widespread fraud and abuse" in the SSA that Musk speaks of… |
