Top Federal Agency With History of Wasteful Spending Could Be Next DOGE Target
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk’s efforts to clean up waste and fraud in the federal government will soon shift its focus to the Social Security Administration (SSA) in a move likely to create a firestorm with Democrats.
The SSA, created by the Social Security Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and tasked with establishing a federal benefits system for older Americans, will soon become a focus of DOGE, according to a report from Semafor that was not denied by the White House when contacted by Fox News Digital.
While several Democrats — including Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in a post on X — have been quick to accuse this move as being aimed at slashing Social Security benefits for the elderly, several areas with potential waste exist in the agency that don’t involve cutting current benefits.
Just Facts, a nonprofit research institute, previously reported that the agency disbursed roughly $2 billion in fraudulent or improper payments in 2022, which it calculated was enough “to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.”
Just Facts explained that through a policy known as “administrative finality,” once the “SSA mistakenly overpays a beneficiary for more than four years, it does not recover past overpayments and deliberately continues to make future overpayments excepting cases of fraud.” (Read more from “Top Federal Agency With History of Wasteful Spending Could Be Next DOGE Target” HERE)
