After aggressively seeking access to the Treasury Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has its sights set on the Social Security administration, with the SSA’s top official abruptly resigning after refusing DOGE access to the agency’s data trove on millions of Americans.
Palace intrigue at the SSA
Former SSA acting commissioner Michelle King left the agency this weekend after more than 30 years of employment there. Numerous reports, including from the New York Times, indicate King chose to leave instead of handing over the proverbial keys to the kingdom to DOGE. Her temporary replacement is Leland Dudek, who ran the agency’s anti-fraud office and, on LinkedIn, praised DOGE’s stated goals of targeting waste and fraud and said he would assist with their mission. King’s permanent replacement will likely be Frank Bisignano, the CEO of payment processing company Fiserv and former high-ranking executive at both JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. Bisignano still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, but he faces no significant opposition there.
Why is DOGE targeting the SSA?
Social Security provides retirement funds for Americans who paid into the system via taxes taken out of their employment pay. Social Security accounts for one-fifth of federal spending, with about $1.5 trillion disbursed in 2024, according to an audit. That same audit found that between 2015 and 2022, a touch under $72 billion was wasted on fraud, mostly involving recipients receiving improper payments. That sounds like a large number, but it amounts to less than 1% of all benefit funds.
Still, Musk has claimed there is rampant fraud at the agency, which necessitates his team gaining access to SSA data. At the White House, Musk specifically made the claim that people born 150 years ago were receiving benefits; he made the same dead-people-getting-checks claim on X (but took it even further).
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President Biden’s SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, told the New York Times that Musk’s claims are nonsense.
Why was King hesitant to grant DOGE the data?
The DOGE team is seeking access to SSA’s internal data, with two anonymous sources telling the New York Times that the information contains “extensive” data on Americans, like addresses, banking information, medical records, earnings statements, and employment history. There is no confirmation yet on whether DOGE members successfully obtained the data and, if so, how many individuals are now in possession of it. Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a nonprofit advocating for the expansion of Social Security, gamed out terrifying scenarios in a report in Kiplinger’s. Altman said granting access to the data could make the information susceptible to hackers and scammers, including those adept at targeting the elderly. Additionally, “if there is an intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned,” Altman told the outlet.
Why Musk and DOGE make some people very nervous
The people powering DOGE are overwhelmingly young (most are in their 20s), and many have no prior government experience. The U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management has listed some of the “experts” advising Musk as his former interns. In his role as a special advisor, Musk himself is boiling over with conflicts of interest, since his companies, like SpaceX and Tesla, have contracts with the U.S. government worth billions. Possibly to address this conflict, White House Office of Administration director Joshua Fisher declared on Monday that Musk is not an official employee of DOGE, but instead serves as a senior advisor to the president. To compound the confusion, Fisher did not make clear who does currently serve as the official head of DOGE.
