The government's Ministry of Efficiency (DOGE) has around 3.2 million Social Security figures preserved for people over 120 as part of their continued efforts to eradicate fraud.
Doge, led by Tech Mogul Elon Musk, announced the move on Tuesday after the Social Security Agency (SSA) spent the last two weeks on “a massive cleaning of records.”
The table posted by the department shows 3,261,057 figures removed from the “living” count, but millions of accounts still remain, belonging to people up to 159 years old, waiting for reviews.
“There's still more work going on,” Doge added in X's post.
Musk called for the SSA by having people with incredibly old numbers on the register in a strict February post, showing thousands of people in the 200s, and one even in the 300s.
“According to the Social Security database, these are the number of people in buckets of each age, and the area of death is set to false!” wrote Doge's chief and X's owner. “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires gathering social security.”
He went on to say that the Social Security program “may be the biggest scam in history,” but responded to a commenter who pointed out that the system shows more “qualified” numbers than US citizens.
Recent Rasmussen Opinion survey It asked people “I support or oppose government efficiency audits the social security system.” They found that 59% strongly (41%) or some (18%) approved the audit.
A social security expert who spoke to Politifact provided two possible explanations for an astounding number of accounts that appear to belong to millions of supercentenarians.
Government databases may code someone from 150 years ago for reasons unique to large and complex social security databases.
Inappropriate payments represent a small share of all payments, but are a long-standing concern for agents.
According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), there is no date value It's coded May 20, 1875 – Date the International Standard Setting Conference, “Convention Dumatres,” was held in Paris.
It is important to note that SSA has automatically stopped paying account holders over 115 since September 2015, so Doge does not necessarily say that the administration has paid the aforementioned 3.2 million accounts.
a Report The SSA's Inspector's Office (OIG) says that management has not established a new system that allows for proper recording of death information, resulting in nearly 19 million Social Security figures for those who were not labeled as deceased before 1920.
After President Donald Trump I grew up In a questionable database issue in February, deputy SSA Lee Dudek thanked him and vowed to continue his investigation.
“I would like to thank President Trump for highlighting these contradictions during his speech at Congress' joint session last night,” Dudeck said. statement. “We are stuck with our commitment to eradicate fraud, waste and abuse in our program and to actively correct inconsistencies that lack the date of death.”
