DAILY TRIFECTA: Social Security Breach
Getting hit by the DOGE ball
THE SET-UP: Jess Bidgood observed in The New York Times’ “On Politics” newsletter that “one hallmark of Elon Musk’s 12 weeks in government has been his focus on Social Security.”
His characterization of America’s much-appreciated “Third Rail” as a “Ponzi Scheme” will likely haunt him for years to come. But the more troubling claim might be his fanciful notion that Social Security is a '“magnet” designed by Democrats to attract waves of illegal immigrants drawn by its benefits. Basically, he’s merged Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” trope with Tucker Carlson’s “Replacement Theory” and produced a conspiratorial version of Frankenstein’s monster. And much like the monster, it is also a fantasy.
Bidgood asked her NY Times colleague Alexandra Berzon to explain:
Immigrants pay into the Social Security system, and they typically don’t get benefits from it, so they’re actually contributing to the system. It’s the opposite of what Musk has said. There are some limited benefits that certain immigrants — those who have been authorized to work, and who have Social Security numbers as a result — are eligible for after certain periods of time. But, as far as we know, these are not huge numbers.
Late yesterday, a White House official sent us a list of the benefits those people had received. They said that around 1,000 people out of this group of about 6,300 collected Medicaid, unemployment benefits or student loans. When we added it all up, those benefits averaged to about $600 per person among those who had gotten the benefits — none of which were Social Security benefits.
So, the “genius” is peddling the opposite of the truth. But he’s got a Venture Capitalist embedded into the Social Security Administration and, like a latter day Secret Squirrel, he’s on a mission to ferret-out the truth. Antonio Gracias is according to the NPR report featured below, “the billionaire chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Valor Equity Partners” and he’s on a mission from Elon.
That mission … is to unplug the magnet and stop the Democrats’ from “importing votes.” In fact, Gracias has been pushing the “Social Security As Illegal Voter Incentive Program” theory on podcasts. He’s also got access to Social Security data and Treasury department data. And he’s probably misreading both to come up with his specious conclusions.
But that’s not stopping the haphazard rollout of the new anti-fraud regime.
Here are two revealing statements from a NewsNation report on DOGE’s “anti-fraud” push (or putsch?) at the Social Security Administration:
The White House has invested more than $16 million in new anti-fraud software that will allow employees to flag suspected fraud over the phone.
…and…
The agency has not specified what constitutes a “fraud-risk indicator,” but it noted that about 70,000 of the 4.5 million telephone claims a year may be flagged.
At least the DOGE team was smart enough to reverse their decision to shut down phone access for folks who need to apply for benefits … but anyone deemed a fraud risk will have to verify in person. But we have no idea what “constitutes” a risk. I guess that’s one of the proprietary bits of code or A/I bots they are embedding into the government’s networks and systems. - jp
TITLE: Social Security’s new anti-fraud measures start Monday. Here’s what you need to know
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/politics/social-security-changes-fraud
EXCERPTS: Social Security will now conduct an anti-fraud check on all phone applications for benefits and flag claims that could be fraudulent. Those who are flagged must verify their identity in person. The agency is also implementing a new policy barring beneficiaries from changing their direct deposit information by telephone.
Spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the agency last month unveiled the two new efforts that it said were aimed at strengthening identity verification within the program. Advocates quickly slammed the measures, saying they would impede many Americans’ access to their Social Security payments.
Fearing they could lose the monthly payments they depend on, many Social Security beneficiaries have been rushing to their local field offices, erroneously thinking that they need to verify their identity. Others are flooding the agency’s phone lines, asking questions about the new policies and demanding appointments to prove their identity.
Initially, the agency said people would no longer be able to file for retirement and disability benefits over the telephone because it could not sufficiently verify applicants’ identities that way. Instead, they would have to use the online “my Social Security” website, which requires identity verification, or to come into a field office. The policy was set to take effect on March 31.
But a week later, the agency announced the phone ban would apply only to those filing for retirement, survivors or family benefits – not to folks filing for disability benefits, Supplemental Security Income or Medicare. And officials pushed the start date to April 14.
Then, in early April, the agency further walked back the policy, announcing that it will continue allowing applicants to file over the phone for all programs, with only those flagged over fraud concerns having to appear in person.
TITLE: AFGE Member Testifies Trump Administration Deliberately Sabotages Social Security, Beneficiaries
https://www.afge.org/article/afge-member-testifies-trump-administration-deliberately-sabotages-social-security-beneficiaries/
EXCERPTS: Testifying before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Social Security April 1, Rennie Glasgow, a claims technical expert who’s handling the most complex cases at the Schenectady Social Security office in New York, said the implementation of a two-step identification process alone means individuals who have trouble logging onto their online account will now have to travel to an office and verify their identity in person. This policy change alone will result in 75,000 to 80,000 more in-person visits to already overwhelmed SSA offices.
Glasglow said Schenectady office has recently lost seven employees. It takes a minimum of two years for an employee to be fully trained. SSA has essentially thrown decades of collective experience out the door.
“This represents a devastating sabotage of institutional knowledge and experience,” he told lawmakers. “For the public, the consequences of this sabotage are severe. A grandmother living in Saratoga Springs now faces waiting times two or three times longer than before just to get someone to answer the phone for a simple address change. Alternatively, she must travel to our local office and spend an entire day waiting for assistance.”
Social Security staffing was already at a 50-year low before these cuts. Americans will struggle to access their earned benefits. While the public suffers from inadequate service, SSA employees who have been paid off also worry about how they will provide for their families.
Modifications to the claims and Social Security card enumeration process will force even more people to visit field offices in person. While more services will require going to an office, these offices are being closed in communities across the country.
A critical policy change that just went into effect also requires SSA to take 100% of someone’s retirement or disability benefits for any overpayment, instead of the prior limit of 10%. This policy shift also severely increases workload at field offices. The change will trigger a flood of phone calls and in-person visits from desperate beneficiaries seeking relief from having their entire benefit withheld.
Glasglow said many overpayments occur because understaffing has made it difficult, if not impossible, to conduct integrity reviews that would prevent overpayments before they happen.
While employees struggle to meet public service demands, they also must spend hours responding to administrative demands like "fork-in-the-road" emails and documenting their weekly activities that were already tracked and quantifiable.
“These obstacles will prevent people, your constituents who have worked hard and paid into this system, from getting their Social Security benefits,” he said. “Americans deserve better than to have their earned benefits placed out of reach due to deliberate sabotage of the system.”
TITLE: How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/11/nx-s1-5352470/doge-musk-social-security-voting
EXCERPTS: One of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency lieutenants working in the Social Security Administration has been pushing dubious claims about noncitizens voting, apparently using access to data that court records suggest DOGE isn't supposed to have.
The staffer, Antonio Gracias, made the claims as part of larger misleading statements about the SSA's enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program, which streamlines the process for granting Social Security cards to certain categories of eligible immigrants.
Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on Fox and Friends that "5-plus million" noncitizens who "came to the country as illegals" received Social Security numbers "through an automatic system" and proceeded to "get into our benefit systems."
"And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted," Gracias said.
State-level audits of voter data have found few examples of noncitizens voting, which is a federal crime punishable with prison and deportation.
Later that week, Gracias furthered his claims on a podcast. "I think this was a move to import voters," he said, echoing a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump and Musk elevated during the 2024 campaign season and Republican lawmakers are invoking to push for stricter voting policies.
While Musk and some Republican lawmakers are now amplifying Gracias' claims online, experts familiar with Social Security say Gracias is mischaracterizing the program, and voter registration experts say they doubt the accuracy of his claims about noncitizens voting.
Until recently, under the EBE program, noncitizens applying for work permits, green cards or naturalization with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could apply for Social Security cards without visiting a field office. The Washington Post and other outlets reported that the EBE program was paused in mid-March, citing an internal email. NPR has not independently confirmed the reporting.
Lawfully present immigrants who are authorized to work get Social Security numbers to ensure they are "paying their taxes into the Social Security trust funds as required by law," said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Since immigrants in the process of naturalizing could use the EBE program, those individuals could be expected to appear on voter rolls once they became U.S. citizens.
It remains unclear which state records the DOGE team checked for noncitizens. On the All-In podcast, Gracias described checking the public voter rolls of four "friendly" states to find noncitizens on the rolls. He then said "we went even further with those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted."
Later in the program, he said "well over a thousand voted" in one state. He has said his team has referred those cases for federal prosecution. In the same unsigned email, the unnamed SSA spokesperson declined to respond to NPR's questions about the inquiry into individuals who allegedly were identified as illegal voters using Social Security data, citing "ongoing criminal investigations on this matter."
But voting experts say the data cross-checking Gracias describes raises legal questions and can be prone to many kinds of errors.
"There are huge accuracy questions here," said Charles Stewart, the director of MIT's Election Data and Science Lab.
Typically, states' public voter rolls would not include Social Security numbers, which would make data matching far less precise. There are known issues with false matches when just using names and birthdays.
Furthermore, it is common for states to find voters who have since naturalized and become citizens when cross-checking databases of noncitizens against their voter rolls.
"DOGE has repeatedly made massive data errors," said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "I have some doubts that they've discovered anything more than maybe just some poor government data quality tracking or they don't understand the data they're looking at."
Multiple federal judges have found the DOGE effort has likely broken the law in its effort to comb through agencies to find "waste, fraud and abuse." Court records have also shown the Trump administration is unable to account for the scope of DOGE's data access, or the need for a small number of staffers to have virtually unfettered access to sensitive, compartmentalized data across the government.
The claims made by Gracias and Musk about Social Security data underscores growing questions around how DOGE is using the data it has gathered. In a ruling blocking DOGE access to Treasury systems, Judge Jeannette Vargas warned that "a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law."
Additionally, DOGE has at times overstated savings claims from canceling contracts, terminating federal office leases and the reshaping of the federal workforce and has not found evidence of fraud.
But Gracias' latest claims about noncitizens voting continue to have an impact on policy in the Trump administration and with the Republican-controlled Congress. During Thursday's House debate over the SAVE Act, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., mentioned DOGE's allegations and the claim that the Biden administration had "imported" noncitizens as a reason to pass the bill.
"We have evidence that they're participating in our elections," Bean said. "The DOGE team just announced millions of illegals now have Social Security numbers. It's happening and it ends today when we vote on this SAVE Act."