Another False Social Security Emergency
When you start reading this commentary, it consists of a series of purposeful misinformation statements. Some might call them lies. The people making them have nothing else, having a basis to add to this other make stuff up.
The system works. Congress does not want to spend the money and fix it. For a small percentage taken from your paycheck (Dale Coberly), Social Security could be fixed for the next 75 years, Congress has difficulty even doing that for their constituents. Read on . . .
Social Security Zombies: Another Big Lie for the MAGA Collection, Dean Baker
Feb 20, 2025
By Dean Baker
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Good followers of Donald Trump have to believe an increasingly large collection of ridiculous lies.
First and foremost, they have to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Then they have the corollary, that January 6th was an inside job pulled off for some reason by the FBI. Of course, they have to believe global warming isn’t happening and apparently now that that Ukraine started its war with Russia.
However, this week Elon Musk and Donald Trump added another big lie to the list: there are tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security. As with all Trump lies it is hard to know what the guy really believes and what is being thrown out to advance a larger goal, but this lie definitely ranks alongside the others for both its craziness and potential importance.
It seems the origins of the Social Security zombie story is Elon Musk’s misunderstanding of a Social Security file on the ages of people getting Social Security. He immediately began tweeting to his hundreds of millions of followers that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security. This line was quickly picked up by various right-wing influencers as yet another example of government incompetence and corruption.
Then Donald Trump made the claim about millions of dead people getting Social Security himself. And under MAGA rules, once the “king” makes a pronouncement, everyone has to say it’s true no matter how utterly absurd it might be. This means all good Republicans have to insist that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, or at least millions.
This claim is absurd on its face. Social Security actually keeps very good track of who is getting benefits, as numerous audits over the years have found. Yes, Social Security is in fact regularly audited by its inspector general and also the Government Accountability Office. It might have been helpful to Elon Musk’s “super-high IQ” DOGE boys if they had taken a few minutes to review some of these audits to understand how Social Security works and the problems it faces.
~~~~~~~
And the system does have problems, most of which are widely known to those familiar with the program. The two most obvious ones are the country’s method of tracking deaths and the age of the Social Security computer system.
The first problem is that there is no national death registry. We could compile this nationally, but this has been a big states’ rights issue, with many people, mostly Republicans, complaining that a national system of registering deaths would be a dangerous step towards totalitarianism. Therefore, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has to rely on getting data on deaths from states.
The other problem is that SSA is relying on an antiquated computer system that is using a computer language from the sixties. Musk and the DOGE boys may well want to ridicule SSA for using a computer system that is fifty or even sixty years old, but an analysis of the problem would again require looking in the mirror.
It would cost billions of dollars to put in place a new system, while maintaining the operation of the current system and ensuring that the privacy of workers’ earnings and benefit records are not compromised. Cost-conscious Republicans in Congress, along with many Democrats, have not wanted to fork over the money. If the Elon Musk and the DOGE boys can arrange for the funding for modernizing the system, they would be widely applauded by supporters of Social Security, but that doesn’t seem the direction they are taking.
In fact, SSA has been pretty ingenuous in working around these obstacles to ensure that the overwhelming majority of its payments are accurate. And when overpayments are made, such as when benefits go to a dead person for a couple of months after death, they often are able to get the money back.
Mr. Arithmetic Exposes the Lie
Anyhow, when it comes to the claim that the zombie hordes are getting Social Security, a quick visit with Mr. Arithmetic should put this nonsense to rest. Social Security gives us very good data (it’s even available to Elon Musk and the DOGE boys) on payments to beneficiaries by age.
We can add this up and calculate the total amount of payments that SSA can identify. That came to $1,227 billion at the end of 2024. We can also go to the Social Security Trustees Report and find out the total amount the program paid out in retiree benefits last year. Interestingly, that also came out to $1,227 billion. So where is the money that is going to the millions of Musk-Trump Social Security beneficiary zombies?
Okay, but maybe these are fake numbers that the geniuses at SSA have put together to trick real tax paying Americans. But which numbers would be fake?
We know the total amount Social Security pays out in benefits each year. There are dozens of records kept on this that are regularly published. Even Elon Musk and the “super-high IQ” DOGE boys can find this out.
Furthermore, if we want to venture into the Twilight Zone and imagine that there are actually hundreds of billions of dollars secretly being paid out to the Musk-Trump zombies every year, we wouldn’t have to worry about this money contributing to the deficit. If the zombie payments are never recorded anywhere, they can’t be a factor in the official deficit that we all know and love.
Maybe the SSA tricksters did it on the other side. They are hugely exaggerating what we are paying as benefits to real working people. All those numbers on people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties are hugely inflated so that they have extra money to pay to the Musk-Trump zombies.
While that would be a very clever trick by the SSA fraudsters, it would also be pretty hard to pull off. We do have very good data on births. Also, we know how many people were born in 1940, 1950, 1960 and every other year. We also know roughly how many of these people are dying. Anyone interested could examine whether, for example, the number of 90-year-olds SSA says are getting benefits makes sense.
The same applies on the benefit side. Social Security has a very well-defined benefit formula, which is readily available to anyone who wants to look. We have good data from a wide variety of sources on the wages people earned during their working years, so we can know roughly what they should be getting in Social Security benefits. We also have data from both public and private sources on what Social Security beneficiaries are actually getting from the program.
If the SSA bureaucrats are able to find ways to exaggerate their proper payments to living people, to hide hundreds of billions of dollars being paid out to dead people each year, they are way more clever than anyone gives them credit for. I’m not sure that fits the story that Elon Musk and the DOGE boys want to tell.
Is There Method to the Madness?
It is always dangerous to try to get into the head of someone who is not making any sense, but it is worth asking if there can be any purpose served by Musk-Trump spewing nonsense about tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security benefits. This could just be another absurd Trump power play where he forces his MAGA followers to accept an absurd lie just to show he can. He did this when he released a huge volume of water in California, ostensibly to help contain the Los Angeles fires, even though the areas getting the water were nowhere near LA.
There is another more pernicious possibility. Musk-Trump may want to foster the belief that there are large numbers of dead people getting Social Security benefit so that they can justify a purge of the rolls. The purge will not be directed at the dead people who are not there, but at their political opponents. This is obviously completely illegal, but if Trump gets to decide the law, as he insists, it’s all fine.
It could be paranoid to imagine that Trump will take away the Social Security benefits that people worked for over many decades, but those who think the worst about Donald Trump are rarely wrong. I guess we will eventually find out his intentions with this idiocy. We have to hope that it’s just Trump’s dementia.
And of course, Social Security has nothing whatsoever to do with the deficit or the national debt. It is funded separately. These attacks are to delegitimize the state, to make way for a dictatorship.
Except, of course, for the fact that the federal government borrows from the social security funds and has to pay it back. Thus contributing to the national debt. Just like the banks and investors who buy the government’s bonds. Blame the lenders!
It ludicrous to claim that SS benefits have nothing to do with deficits or debt. Social Security funding is so intertwined with the rest of government funding requirements that pretending that organizing the books in the current manner proves that SS is not an element of the deficit and debt positions of the federal government totally belies reason. For example, let’s consider the income tax on benefits. These are not social security taxes, therefore not collecting it should not impact SS operations, right? You might not be amazed to learn that as currently organized not collecting these non-SS taxes will have a huge impact on the program. The net redemption of the SS Trust Fund over the coming decade is a very major obligation for Treasury. So how does Treasury meet this obligation? Higher general taxes, or less general spending or higher sales of regular debt. Do you think that, apart from a few thousand Dale Corblys, people see this and think SS is not part of the deficit and debt positions of the United States? It absolutely is a part of the overall fiscal circumstances of the nation and instead of claiming otherwise the argument is that this is critical and funding it is of the highest priority.
@Eric,
It ludicrous to claim that SS benefits have anything to do with the federal deficits or national debt. Social Security funding is separate from the rest of government funding requirements. Pretending that organizing the books in the current manner proves that SS is an element of the deficit and debt positions of the federal government totally belies the facts. For example, let’s consider the income tax on benefits. These dollars go back to Social Security, not the general fund like other income taxes. The net redemption of the SS Trust Fund over the coming decade is a very major obligation for Treasury. So how does Treasury meet this obligation? By paying back the dollars it borrowed via the special treasuries that the Trust Fund was obligated to use. People who understand the facts know that SS is not part of the deficit and debt positions of the United States. Funding it is of the highest priority, which is why SS taxes need to be increased.
Eric:
You have read Dale’s and my commentary on Social Security and the Trust fund from which payments are drawn from today. People who work still pay into Social Security which is credited to their accounts for future withdrawals. It is ludicrous for you to make your remarks here on Angry Bear when we have explained how SS works over and over again.
You wish to steal the amount paid into Social Security to resolve a deficit, and expanding deficit due to tax breaks which have not, not paid for themselves as promised by Republicans and the orange-faced creep? Tax breaks which benefit the upper 10% of the taxpayers.
“Its” current proposal is to eliminate taxes on Social Security under the guise people will not have to pay income tax. Most people do not pay taxes on their Social Security benefits. Indeed, most people do not withhold from their Social Security payment because deductions are far higher than what is paid out to them. If you were to withhold, the lowest percentage you would have to withhold by law is 7%.
And that is because some people have an income which should be taxed due to their having income far greater than what a person normally has.
Your remark on general taxes paying for SS is wrong. SS funds itself via a separate tax on a person’s income and a similar tax on the company paying that person’s salary. But you already know this if you work in the US. Your statements on general taxes are wrong.
Social Security is funded today and for an ~10 years. If you wish to secure its future beyond the approximate 10 years it is funded, it would take some minor tweaks to withholding of an ~ 2 tenths of 1% over five years to do so.
@Bill,
“Social Security is funded today and for an ~10 years.”
Yes. And if nothing is done, it will still pay ca. 80% of projected benefits. Of course, Trump’s plan to make SS benefits tax-free would only make matters worse.
John:
Your comment has nothing to do with Social Security. Many people do not have a NYT subscription also. Your comment also does not tell us why you think this politician (unknown) is so wonderful. In which case I might have left your comment.
I am deleting your comment as it has nothing to do with the post.
“ . most people do not pay taxes on their Social Security benefits. Indeed, most people do not withhold from their Social Security payment because deductions are far higher than what is paid out to them.”
Excuse me but you have made an error in your assumption SS is not taxed.
The Social Security taxes you pay are not directly deductible from your income for federal income tax purposes. However, you can deduct half of your self-employment tax (which includes both Social Security and Medicare taxes) when calculating your net income for federal income tax purposes. This deduction reduces your taxable income for federal tax purposes, but it’s not a direct “deduction” from the income.
Tge above is for sole proprietor, they pay double SS. If your an employee you pay 1/2 and employer pays 1/2 but your 1/2 is off the top no deduction. The company takes the deduction for the 1/2 it pays. So you do pay taxes going in and going out, I’m on SS now and will pay the full 12.4% plus 2.9% Medicare , I’ll pay 20k in SS and receive 36k this year then I’ll pay taxes on 1/2 or 10,000 of 40% . The rich don’t pay taxes is a load of crap.
Mark:
I am fully aware of what you pay when you are self-employed. My point was meant for when you are retired. I was self-employed for a while also. My not clearly made point was that while on SS, we paid little or no tax. Most of this was due to the deductible plus deductions for mortgage, property tax, etc.
I’ll also have the joy of paying IRMAfor my Medicare , instead of paying 175 a month IRMA will raise that to closer $700 a month. So I continue to pay taxes as I enter retirement. On the other hand I’ll wake up and look out at the ocean and have coffee Dow at the pool so I’m glad I do my part in helping out those less fortunate.
Mark:
You are very fortunate. My wife and I are not at that income level. Even so, we get by. We worked till we were 71. I was in the six-digit range for income for a number of years at the end. We skimped and slugged funds away when we could. We help in the community also because we can.