To combat supposed waste and fraud in the Social Security System, the Trump Administration is taking draconian steps to ensure that only eligible individuals are able to collect benefits. These efforts are almost exclusively aimed at requiring individuals already collecting benefits to go through a rigorous process to maintain their benefits and to create a more onerous process for individuals who become eligible for and need to apply for benefits. The steps taken include:
- requiring individuals to go to a Social Secuirty office in person to apply for benefits (rather than being able to apply online) or, if they are already collecting benefits, to re-submit evidence that they are, indeed, eligible.
- closing over 40 Social Security offices, thus forcing many individuals to travel longer distances to go to an office
- reduce the hours that Social Security offices are open
- reducing the staffing at offices forcing people to wait longer to see an agent
- reducing staff at call centers resulting in longer wait times for people to trying to receive guidance on what they need to bring into an office
- cutting support of the Social Security website making it more difficult for people to access information on-line.
Creating these barriers will erect hurdles that many individuals, primarily lower income individuals (who work longer hours, have less reliable transportation, and have family-care responsibilities) and individuals in rural areas (who will have to travel further), will find very difficult to overcome. All this in the name of reducing fraud and waste. So what is the evidence of wide-spread fraud and waste in the system and if it does exist, are these actions the best way to root it out? Let’s look at both these issues.
In terms of actual waste and fraud in the system, there is very little evidence that much exists, despite Trump’s constant claims to the contrary. One of his most egregious assertions was that:
- 4.7 million people age 100-109
- 3.6 million people age 110-119]
- 3.47 million people age 120-129
- 3.9 million people age 130-139
- 3.5 million people age 140-149
- 1.3 million people age 150-159
- over 130,000 people over age 160
are in the Social Security data base and “money is being paid to many of them”.1 It is blantatly false and easy to verify that no virtually no money is being paid to these people. As explained by USA Today: “But while the Social Security database does include active files for nearly 19 million people born before 1921, this does not imply widespread fraud. Rather, the names are not marked as deceased because the SSA did not receive or record information about their death, primarily because they died before the use of electronic reporting, according to a 2023 audit. But the SSA assumes these people are deceased, and “almost none” received payments. The SSA also has a safeguard that terminates benefits for people at the age of 115.”2
Social Security itself reported “improper” payments of $88 million in 2023. That may seem like a lot, but it amounts to only .3% of the total payments that Social Security sends out. Also, only a fraction of those “improper” payments were due to fraud; most were due to errors by either the individual or the system. To get an idea of how big a problem this is, we can look at corporate retailers efforts to combat inventory “shrinkage”; the disappearance of inventory due to theft. The shrinkage rate for retailers is 1.6%; that’s over five times the rate of “improper” payments by Social Security. So, it appears that the the likes of Walmart, Target, Macy’s, etc… are doing a much worse job of policing theft/fraud than Social Secuirty is.
Of course there are a number of things corporate retailers could do to lower their shrinkage rate. They could have an employee follow each customer around as they go through the store. They could reduce the number of customers they allow into the store at any time. They could make customers place orders at the front of the store rather than allowing them to walk through it. They don’t do these things because they are costly and would reduce sales. Corporate retailers know that there is a cost to reducing the shrinkage rate. At some point, the costs of reducing further shrinkage outweigh the benefits of doing so. They realize some shrinkage is inevitable; it is simply not cost effective to reduce it to zero. Apparently 1.6% is about the rate where it is no longer worthwhile to reduce it more. By this measure then, Social Security is doing an outstanding job preventing fraud. So, contrary to Trump’s claims, the fraud problems in the Social Secuirty system are not out of control.
But even if fraud was a major problem in Social Security, are the measures Trump is implementing the most effective way to combat it; closing offices, cutting staff, making it more difficult for people to enroll, requiring people to frequently re-submit documentation to prove their eligibility? This is the equivalent of a retailor, in an effort to reduce fraud, making it more difficult for their customers to shop at their stores. Clearly this is not the case. In fact, if Trump were truly interested in reducing fraud in Social Security he would be doing the OPPOSITE of what he is actually doing; he would INCREASE staffing at Social Secuirty so they could more effectively screen and monitor who is receiving benefits.
Trump’s actions in regard to Social Security has little, if anything, to do with reducing fraud. His goal is to reduce payments out of the system by making it more complicated and onerous for eligible individuals to collect the benefits they are due. This ties in with his goal to shrink government (even in effective areas) and to increase dissatisfation with the “inefficiency” of government to make it easier for Republicans to privatize Social Secuirty so that recipients have to pay Wall Street firms to manage their accounts for them.
Trump makes false claims to throw red meat to his MAGA base. His enablers in Congress go along because it fits in with their desire to shrink government, no matter the cost. Wall Street is supportive because they’ve had their eyes on collecting management fees from Social Security recepients for decades. Ultimately the price of what Trump and his Republican allies are doing will be paid by lower and middle income individuals who will find it more difficult and costly to collect benefits they are due.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/03/05/trump-social-security-fraud-claims/81508815007
