President Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are ratcheting up false rhetoric about Social Safety, repeatedly claiming this system wastes tons of of billions of {dollars} in fraudulent payouts that have to be eradicated.
Their place is confounding specialists and worrying advocates, who worry the claims are a pretext for large cuts to this system down the street.
Trump, Musk and the administration’s allies insist they’re concentrating on waste, fraud and abuse and are not going after advantages.
In an interview Monday with Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s chief financial adviser in his first time period, Musk prompt Social Safety and different entitlement applications are rife with fraud and a major goal for cuts.
“A lot of the federal spending is entitlements. In order that’s the massive one to eradicate,” Musk stated on Kudlow’s Fox Enterprise present, including there’s presumably $500 billion to $700 billion in potential cuts there.
Musk additionally stated they’re attempting to place a cease to “stolen” and “fake” Social Safety numbers.
The tech mogul confirmed his hostility to Social Safety earlier this month, when he referred to it as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Musk’s feedback echo what Trump stated throughout his joint deal with to Congress final week.
“We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud,” Trump stated. “We’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.”
Democrats have been sounding the alarm on Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) for weeks and stated Monday’s interview confirmed their worst fears. They stated Musk’s feedback straight contradict Trump and GOP leaders’ vows to not contact Social Safety advantages.
“The richest man on Earth repeated again a bevy of lies that entitlement programs tens of millions of people rely on are riddled with fraud and abuse. That’s a pretext to slashing them, but it’s false,” Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated Tuesday.
“Elon Musk is shamelessly lying about Social Security, claiming it’s riddled with fraud, in order to justify taking benefits away from seniors and retirees,” Schumer stated.
The White Home pushed again on these accusations Tuesday, asserting Trump won’t lower entitlement advantages.
“The Trump Administration will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” the White Home stated in a press launch. “President Trump himself has said it (over and over and over again).”
Economists say the degrees of fraud talked about by Trump and Musk simply don’t exist.
A report by the Social Safety Administration’s inspector common final yr discovered the company made practically $72 billion in improper funds from fiscal 2015 by way of fiscal 2022 — lower than 1 % of advantages paid out throughout that interval.
“I’m a firm believer in the perpetual inefficiency of government. But if I had to pick one place in the federal government that is more efficient than most, Social Security would be one of them,” stated Chuck Blahous, a senior analysis strategist on the Mercatus Middle at George Mason College and a former prime financial adviser within the George W. Bush administration.
Representatives from DOGE have reportedly gained entry to delicate taxpayer knowledge collected by the Social Safety Administration (SSA).
In accordance with a declaration in a federal lawsuit from Tiffany Flick, the company’s former appearing chief of workers, the DOGE staffers appeared to need the info to seek for proof of alleged advantages fraud.
Flick wrote that she thought the DOGE crew’s issues had been “invalid and based on an inaccurate understanding of SSA’s data and programs.”
DOGE officers seemed to be targeted “on the general myth of supposed widespread Social Security fraud, rather than facts,” she wrote.
Democrats agree fraudulent spending needs to be rooted out of presidency businesses, however they argue Trump and Musk are utilizing fraud as a guise to chop applications they don’t like.
“You could argue whether a particular appropriation for a particular program is good or bad policy, but if it’s legal, then the right remedy is legislation,” Blahous stated.
Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Safety Works, stated the quantity of fraud in this system is “vanishingly small,” and the results of Musk and Trump’s actions will undermine confidence in authorities.
“There’s no line item [of] waste, fraud and abuse that you can just scratch off,” Altman stated. “This is a way to undermine people’s confidence in … Social Security, and to pretend that you’re cutting something that everybody agrees should be cut, when actually you’re really cutting into the essence. You’re cutting into the bone.”
