Readers react to the U.S. DOGE Service’s claims of Social Security fraud and recouped “savings.”

March 6, 2025

We live in an age of specialization. Life is too short, and human intellect too finite, to know everything. Therefore, it’s easy to make a fool of yourself by weighing in on matters outside your area of expertise.

Case in point: Elon Musk. He earned a fortune by pioneering electric vehicles and spacecraft technology. Even his choice to buy Twitter, which seemed like a bad business move at first, appears to be a contributing factor in his increasing influence. That his economies debased the quality of the product by facilitating the propagation of falsehoods seems not to be of importance to him. Musk and President Donald Trump seem to believe that success in business also means that they can be successful in detecting waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.

Oops.

Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service — which stands for Department of Government Efficiency — accessed a Social Security Administration database listing the names and birth dates of Americans who have been issued personal identification numbers dating to when the agency began issuing payments in 1940. At that time, registrants needed to have been born in 1875 or before. Anyone who applies for Social Security without a birth date may be defaulted to 1875 as a placeholder — making them appear 150 today. But most of the people who registered without birth dates have now died, and benefits automatically cut off at age 115.

Apparently unaware of how this database operates, Musk and his team inferred that millions of people well over 100 years old are receiving benefits. As he posted on X, “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”

In fact, the Social Security Administration gathers information from many sources to help it stop providing benefits when people die. Only 0.1 percent of all Social Security benefits are paid to the roughly 70,000 people over the age of 100. Musk and his staff would have realized that had they known to look in the Social Security Administration’s Annual Statistical Supplement.

No informed person claims that the Social Security Administration is error-free. But its payment record is more than 99 percent accurate, and it strives, successfully, to correct those errors that do occur.

College students who made Musk’s error in a term paper would be marked down for sloppy research. High school students might be gently reproved and told to do better next time. Musk rampages on.

Henry Aaron, Washington

The writer is Bruce and Virginia MacLaury senior fellow in the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution.

They knew when my father died

Regarding the Feb. 20 Business article “Musk’s claims of rampant Social Security fraud don’t hold up. Here’s why.”:

My father died on March 19, 1999. I received Dad’s March Social Security check in the mail after his death, so I decided to deposit it in his account for my mother. I received a call from the bank that his check couldn’t be deposited because of his recent death.

Yes, Social Security does pay attention to when you leave this Earth.

Janet Hawkins, Alexandria

She told her husband she was 61

Years ago, I worked as a Social Security claims representative in Des Moines, helping people claim their retirement benefits. One of our major responsibilities was to prove a client was at least 65, the retirement age at the time. Because Iowa’s records were excellent, I was always surprised when folks came in lacking proof of their age. Our manual had several pages to guide us through valid records. The gold standard was a birth or baptismal certificate or document (such as a school record) before age 5. Failing that, we could rely on census records, immigration records and even family Bibles — which were especially useful for those born in Missouri.

My most memorable client was a woman who came in with her husband, who was 62 and filing for retirement. Trim in a suit jacket and a pencil skirt, the woman batted her baby blues and said she was 61 — but had no birth records. I sent her to Iowa’s vital statistics office to get the oldest state census record (taken every 10 years on the fives — e.g., 1915, 1925) in which she might be recorded.

She came back alone, terrified that her husband would find out her real age. A state census record showed she was at least 65. We assured her it was confidential. Then we paid for a federal census record to get a second confirming document. As I found out from a 1910 record, she was actually at least 75 years old. She might have been even older, but since we had proved she was at least 65, we set her up for benefits and didn’t ask any more questions.

Kathy Larson, Columbia

Savings? What savings?

Regarding the Feb. 19 article “Trump expresses interest in ‘DOGE dividend’ payments to Americans”:

The U.S. DOGE Service’s latest idea is to give “DOGE savings back to taxpayers”? First of all, what savings? Very little savings has actually been verified, and this doesn’t begin to offset the potential costs DOGE might incur.

Think of the costs of lawsuits and any penalties resulting from lost cases. Include the costs of rehiring critical employees, such as those who were mistakenly fired from the National Nuclear Security Administration. Count on rising unemployment costs. Add the cost of firing more than 6,000 Internal Revenue Service employees at the height of tax season, which will surely impede the IRS’s ability to track and fight fraud. And firing a thousand National Park Service employees who worked as secondary forest firefighters could lead to the loss of homes, businesses and even lives.

Will DOGE give “150-year-old” Social Security recipients their share of the savings? If DOGE had only done its homework, it would have learned that “150-year-olds” was Social Security’s flag for further review of a recipient’s actual information, not an indication of government fraud or incompetence, as DOGE likes to claim.

DOGE seems to be trying to eliminate math, homework and analytical thinking right along with the Education Department. I’m sure we can expect more expensive mistakes and bad ideas to come.

Carol Stricker, Arlington

No pile of cash

Regarding the Feb. 23 editorial, “DOGE savings should pay off the debt, not voters”:

Though The Post is doing an excellent job uncovering and reporting the activities of the U.S. DOGE Service, the Editorial Board might be inadvertently contributing to a consequential misunderstanding about public finance and federal deficits. This is particularly evident when considering the notion that DOGE will find enough “savings” to send every American a $5,000 check or, as the board wrote, pay down trillions of dollars of government debt.

This is nonsense. Either President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who oversees DOGE, don’t understand government finance or they are conning the American people. Or both.

The federal government is not a business. It is the sole issuer of currency, and it does so by spending money into the economy. Federally issued currency doesn’t exist until it is spent. It is misleading to suggest that — by firing employees, canceling contracts and slashing programs — the money the government doesn’t spend accumulates in a savings account. There is no pot of “recovered” money available to then be reallocated to “DOGE dividends,” as one CEO suggested, or to reducing government debt.

Put another way, government debt is a historical record of the money the government has spent into the economy but hasn’t taxed back out. Dollar for dollar, accumulated government debt is exactly equivalent to accumulated savings for nongovernment sectors, including households and businesses. So when you advocate for government surpluses, remember that you are also advocating for household and business deficits. Be very careful what you wish for.

Susan P. Borden, Bennington, Vermont

Money and moral complacency

Sure, a $5,000 check courtesy of Uncle Sam would seem like a boon to millions of Americans in the throes of the rising cost of living, stagnant incomes and lingering economic insecurity. Maybe folks would pay off a chunk of that debt, take that long-delayed vacation, create an emergency savings fund or buy the latest TV.

But make no mistake: Any “dividend” check from the U.S. DOGE Service’s federal funding cuts would come with a cost — one measured in human lives.

It comes from the veteran calling the Veterans Affairs crisis line and not receiving a timely answer. It comes from the 2-year-old child in Africa who can no longer access the HIV medicine that allows them to live through their first years. It could come from deregulating pollutants, which could affect you, or your neighbors’ health.

What would you do if that $5,000 showed up in your mailbox? Would you picture these people’s faces, or would you see yourself one step closer to paying off that debt or driving that nicer car? You didn’t cut the funding yourself, so what’s the harm in accepting some “free” cash, right?

As Americans’ financial insecurity worsens, I fear we may also grow more complacent about these moral quandaries.

Will Houston, Los Angeles

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/06/letters-doge-elon-musk-social-security