Billionaire Elon Musk, the driving power behind United States President Donald Trump’s budget-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), has broached the delicate subject of Social Safety price financial savings on the TV channel Fox Enterprise.
Musk advised host Larry Kudlow, a former Trump financial adviser, that the Authorities Accountability Workplace estimated in 2024 that federal authorities fraud was “half a trillion {dollars}”.
Whereas referring to waste, Musk mentioned: “Many of the federal spending is entitlements. In order that’s like the massive one to remove. That’s the kind of half-trillion, perhaps $600, $700bn a yr.”
Utilizing the phrase “remove” in the identical breath as “entitlements” set off alarms amongst Trump’s and Musk’s Democratic critics. White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned on the March 11 information briefing that Musk was referring to reducing waste, fraud and abuse in these programmes, and Trump “goes to guard Social Safety”, Medicare and Medicaid.
At a March 11 occasion selling Tesla vehicles on the White Home, a reporter requested Musk if he may assure there can be no interruption to Social Safety advantages.
“We’re going to be very cautious with any advantages,” Musk mentioned. “In truth, solely by tackling waste or fraud can we really protect these programmes for the longer term.”
“Fraud” and “waste” imply various things. Waste refers to careless use, and fraud contains legal wrongdoing.
Musk referred to a report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO), a nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress that examines federal spending. In 2024, the workplace estimated there are $233bn to $521bn in fraudulent funds throughout the federal government per yr.
The report went additional than Social Safety, Medicare and Medicaid, which make up about half of mandatory government spending. It covers the complete authorities, together with pandemic-related aid programmes that resulted in document fraud.
Musk mentioned reducing fraud and waste will assist his efforts to slash $1 trillion from the federal funds. However his estimates for fraud are on the prime finish of the GAO’s estimate or exceed it. For Social Safety, the inspector normal in 2021 discovered about $300m in funds was made after the deaths of beneficiaries over about 20 years – about one-third of which was recovered. Though federal officers have lengthy recognised improper spending as an issue, it isn’t the primary motive for the programme’s dire monetary outlook.
What does the federal government find out about general fraud?
In April, the Authorities Accountability Workplace beneath President Joe Biden produced what it known as a “first-of-its variety, government-wide estimate of federal {dollars} misplaced to fraud”.
The workplace’s estimate of $233bn to $521bn misplaced in fraud per yr lined 2018-2022 knowledge in experiences from company inspectors normal and fraud experiences submitted to the Workplace of Administration and Funds.
Musk cited the excessive finish of the vary when he mentioned “half a trillion”. The White Home didn’t reply to our query in regards to the supply of his $600bn to $700bn determine.
The GAO’s top-line figures included not solely official fraud findings from authorized proceedings but in addition estimates from particular person businesses’ findings of fraud. The company additionally extrapolated figures it believed represented undetected fraud.
The estimated losses signify about 3 % to 7 % of common federal outlays.
The Workplace of Administration and Funds, the company that assists the president in assembly his funds targets, discovered a decrease determine of federal authorities fraud, from $4.41bn to $7.31bn yearly, based mostly on quantities confirmed via a judicial or adjudication course of.
Specialists on the federal funds mentioned it’s essential to concentrate to the total evaluation within the authorities experiences.
Joshua Sewell, director of analysis and coverage at Taxpayers for Frequent Sense, mentioned taxpayers ought to view these numbers with a “huge grain of salt”. The report is stuffed with caveats and is probably going not consultant of different years due to the rise in pandemic spending.
“It’s a wonderful report back to attempt to put numbers to an amorphous subject, however you possibly can’t take the high-end numbers as a definitive assertion on the greenback quantity of fraud that exists in federal spending,” he mentioned.
It’s doable that about 5 % of the annual federal funds is misplaced to fraud and a few programmes have improper fee charges in extra of 10 %, mentioned Bob Westbrooks, govt director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a authorities committee Congress created 5 years in the past. However the phrase “improper funds” doesn’t essentially imply fraud; it contains situations with inadequate documentation.
“Regardless of the quantity, it’s big in absolute phrases,” Westbrooks mentioned, referring to all fraud.
Westbrooks mentioned Musk was conflating fraud and waste and ignoring that COVID-19-era fraud was seemingly pushing up the federal government’s estimated vary, because the report itself famous.
The Authorities Accountability Workplace mentioned the vary is a “reflection of each the uncertainty related to estimating fraud and the variety within the threat environments that had been current in fiscal years 2018 via 2022”.
What will we find out about Social Safety fraud?
On the March 11 White Home briefing, Leavitt cited an inspector normal report from the Social Safety Administration that discovered greater than $70bn of fraud in that programme alone.
The 2024 report didn’t conclude there was greater than $70bn in Social Safety “fraud”. It mentioned the programme despatched nearly $71.8bn in “improper funds” from 2015 to 2022, a interval that features Trump’s first time period. That’s lower than 1 % of general funds in that timeframe.
On Fox Enterprise, Musk mentioned “there’s an enormous quantity of fraud” with folks submitting pretend Social Safety numbers to obtain a spread of presidency advantages, together with Social Safety, healthcare and unemployment help.
Many of the improper payouts revealed by the inspector normal had been overpayments with some underpayments. This occurs, for instance, when beneficiaries fail to report needed info or the administration fails to replace data, the 2024 inspector normal report mentioned. Neither represents legal intent essentially.
The Social Safety Administration has lengthy struggled to curb improper funds.
“With out higher entry to knowledge, elevated automation, techniques modernisation, and coverage or legislative adjustments, improper funds will proceed to be a problem into the longer term,” the report mentioned.
The Social Safety Administration inspector normal in 2021 discovered $298m in funds after dying to about 24,000 beneficiaries from 1998 to 2019. These beneficiaries had been in suspended fee standing, however the funds had been nonetheless despatched as a result of technicians didn’t observe coverage or search all obtainable dying data. The report mentioned it “didn’t establish particular situations of fraud” and offered dying info to the Workplace of Investigations.
The federal government recovered about $84m, the report mentioned.
Simply this yr, defendants have been convicted or sentenced for fraudulently cashing cheques despatched to deceased beneficiaries, for identification theft used to acquire Social Safety advantages and for theft of Social Safety funds supposed for kids.
How has the Social Safety Administration tried to deal with fraud and waste?
Musk mentioned within the Fox Enterprise interview that the federal authorities had finished “many good audits” however the businesses haven’t applied auditors’ steerage constantly.
On March 3, the Social Safety Administration’s inspector normal launched a standing report on its most up-to-date suggestions.
In all, the inspector normal discovered 280 prior suggestions that had not been applied with potential financial savings of $18.4bn. In some circumstances, the Social Safety Administration disagreed with the proposals. A few of the unimplemented suggestions included nearer scrutiny of particular teams of beneficiaries for whom the company is conscious of doable discrepancies. Others urged adjustments within the pc system’s alerts.
A few of the Authorities Accountability Workplace’s suggestions to Congress have additionally gone unimplemented. In 2022, the GAO urged Congress to amend the Social Safety Act to make everlasting the sharing of full dying knowledge with the Treasury Division, however that hasn’t occurred but.
Social Safety is financially in bother in a decade
Social Safety faces a tough path forward. Its existential funding woes are greater than the situations of useless folks getting profit cheques.
Probably the most vital threats to Social Safety’s long-term viability are a scarcity of staff feeding their tax {dollars} into the system and a rising variety of retirement-age Individuals qualifying to obtain advantages.
American life expectancy has risen since Social Safety’s creation in 1935 and so has the variety of eligible recipients. However because the child growth era (born from 1946 to 1964) enters retirement, fewer staff are paying into the system.
The Social Safety belief funds received’t be capable to pay 100% of advantages by 2035, the 2024 Social Safety Trustees Report mentioned. The trustees have issued related warnings for greater than a decade.
Traditionally, most politicians from each events have been loath to suggest Social Safety adjustments. Political pundits typically confer with it because the “third rail” in American politics – you contact it, you die, a minimum of on the poll field, the place older voters usually have the very best voter turnout.
