DOGE Announces 'Major Cleanup' for Social Security [View all]
Source: Newsweek
Published Mar 18, 2025 at 3:43 AM EDT | Updated Mar 18, 2025 at 9:29 AM EDT
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has said it has begun a "major cleanup" of records at the Social Security Agency. "For the past two weeks, @SocialSecurity has begun a major cleanup of their records. Approximately 3.2 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. More work still to be done," DOGE said on X early on Tuesday. Newsweek has contacted the SSA for comment via email outside of regular working hours.
Why It Matters
Tesla's billionaire CEO Musk, who is leading President Donald Trump's cuts to federal spending, in February said millions of people well above the age of 100 could be collecting Social Security benefits.
The SSA has suggested the figures have been misread and those millions refer to many not receiving benefits but "do not have a date of death associated with their record." Its published statistics show of 67 million receiving Social Security benefits, approximately 53,000—about 0.1 percent—are centenarians.
What To Know
The post from DOGE said that over two weeks more than 3.2 million people older than 120 years old had been removed; though 9.5 million Social Security numbers belonging to people over the age of 120 remained. DOGE released a chart that broke down the records cleanup by age brackets. It showed:
Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/doge-announces-major-cleanup-social-security-2046231https://www.newsweek.com/doge-announces-major-cleanup-social-security-2046231
I expect some of those birth years may have been erroneous data errors when records were switched from system to system over the years, so you may have many elderly on there who don't even know that their record had errors as they probably had no way or ability (physical health issues) to double check.
= new reply since forum marked as read