I guess we aren't communicating well if you think that I am claiming that a data entry person is resurrecting dead people to steal social security money. Sheesh.
well thats what you are responding to...if you hit the little arrow next to our names in the replies you can trace back the convo of what you are commenting on
I'm not a lawyer, but I do believe he should be legally obligated to let us know.
This is where arguments are currently being held and the courts will let us know. The Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 which basically says Congress holds budget and spending authority which cannot be overruled by the Executive. However, other Acts say the opposite lol our government...
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-primer-on-the-impoundment-control-actExternal Quote:
Ok. I see the confusion. I should have said that the entries are implying fraud, rather than the entries themselves are fraudulent.
or the inspector general. i'm ASSUMING the inspector general cant make arrests themselves, but maybe they can? so dont quote me on the fbi. i know bank fraud etc goes to the fbi.
Article: The Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, allows the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) to collect your information, which OIG may use to investigate alleged fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct related to SSA programs and operations. Providing the information is voluntary, but not providing all or part of the information may limit our ability to conduct a complete investigation. As law permits, we may use and share the information you submit, including with other Federal and local government agencies, and others, as outlined in the routine uses within System of Records Notices (SORN) OIG-001 and OIG-002, available at www.ssa.gov/privacy. When appropriate, the information you submit may also be provided to the SSA for use in computer matching programs to establish or verify eligibility for SSA programs and to recoup debts under these programs. All SSA SORNs are also available at www.ssa.gov/privacy .
didn't Trump fire most of the inspectors general? Which ones are left?
Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891350795452654076External Quote:
Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891557463377490431External Quote:
Source: https://www.ssa.gov/budget/assets/materials/2017/2017FCJ.pdfExternal Quote:
GIven that Musk has said that they're "definitely dead", I'm not sure what you're trying to debunk.
I agree. So he is basically asserting that because no one is that old then it must be fraudulent but he has provided no actual evidence of fraud. He is hoping that the assertion itself will sway the American people to assume fraud and thus validate his actions.
Can you provide evidence please?
Age 115 is not a hard cut-off for receiving benefits, if anyone actually did live long. There's just an automated process that runs that will look for people 115+ that have not been receiving benefits for seven years and have no dependents still receiving benefits, and it terminate their benefits. This prevents people from going and using the automated system to reactivate the dead folk's benefits and adding new dependents, etc, which could have previously been possible because they were not marked dead in the db.
But does it dispel the idea that there are checks going out to people whose database entries indicate they are 150 years old and that these checks are being cashed, thus costing the taxpayer money?
Agree. I don't think there are many if any 150 year old people still receiving benefits (or people receiving it for them). Based on the numbers @TheCholla posted there are only ~44,000 105+ year olds still on the the doll.
yea through age 99 there are 377,626,689 so...like 42 million off. hhmmm..
I think everyone born gets enrolled in the MBR. I am not 100% on that maybe someone who knows more can correct me if that is wrong.
New York Times article from February 19 (paywalled):External Quote:
That last link is accessible from this page on the SSA website.External Quote:
A meta-pun, beautiful
The way I understand it is not that the SSA is sending out retirement checks to millions of dead people, it's that other systems depend on the SSA system for verifying someone's status. So fraudsters are impersonating these dead people (and newly born people) and defrauding other systems, like Medicaid and the Small Business Administration. Example from DOGE: fraudsters will steal a baby's SS number or a dead person's SS number and take out a loan with the SBA on their behalf. Musk explained this in his podcast with Joe Rogan. The DOGE team also talked about this in their interview with Brett Baier.There were some articles about this in the mainstream press that I don't think anyone linked!
AP News fact check from February 19:
New York Times article from February 19 (paywalled):External Quote:
That last link is accessible from this page on the SSA website.External Quote:
Or just moving the goalposts.
I don't remember Leavitt's statement, as this was almost 3 months ago, but at that time even they probably didn't fully understand what was going on. I haven't heard anyone recently say these dead people were receiving retirement checks. It seems to me the understanding is what I posted above.
No. In fact, I even agreed to an earlier poster that said he/she is skeptical that the SSA is actually sending checks to these dead people.
The paragraph you quoted makes no reference to you at all, so how can it be an accusation against you? You're tilting at non-existent windmills. If you're trying to ingratiate yourself as a good-faith contributor to this discussion, you're going about it in a terribly inefficient way.
But it's not the purpose of the database.
I respect the intelligence of anyone reading this to see that Mauro implied I was moving the goalposts.
The point of the SSA system kind of is to keep individuals records, though, right? They have birth date and SS number. I agree with what you're saying about the benefits and if I were designing the database, I would have a separate Benefits table with all that information in it. But whatever table stores the birth date should also have a death date. And I do agree with having some type of status along with these date fields.
It's possible he meant DOGE was moving the goalposts. DOGE initially made the statement about their being many dead people receiving payments and then changed it to the argument you have given below.
When you say, they are depend on SSA systems to verify their status, what do you mean? The status of what?
as legal real people (eligible for what they are applying for). vs fake names or illegal immigrants or foreigners living in another country etc.
So SSA verify it's a real person, but not whether or not the person is dead? That's the argument.
Whether the person is "valid" (legal citizen, valid recipient of whatever entitlements, still living, etc). And, according to DOGE, the SSA system is the source of this information and all other gov't entities that need to verify individuals talk to SSA for that verification. DOGE doesn't go into the technical details of how this works, understandably because it's probably a security risk. But essentially, they're saying a gov't entity will ask SSA "is this person valid?", the person may meet all of the other requirements (legal citizen, valid recipient, etc) but they are dead and SSA shows them as alive so SSA returns "yes". Seems like a simple issue that should have been addressed long ago.. but was not, according to DOGE.
"It sounds like" it could happen, but is it happening? If the chaos and disruption DOGE has caused is fixing problems that sound like they might be happening but in fact are not, that seems to be a case of cost exceeding benefit. If it is happening but very rarely, it seems likely that the cost in chaos exceeds possible benefit. If it is widespread, then at some point it can be argued that what is gained by shutting it down exceeds the cost of the chaos.
All we can point to at this time is what DOGE has stated. They said they have assessed that ~40% of calls to SSA are fraudulent calls. How did they assess that? I don't know. But I have no reason not to trust this. Yes, I'd rather see the data but my default position is not going to be that they are lying. Hopefully, at some point, when the DOGE initiative has ran its course, each department will present their findings, changes, etc. Until then, I'm not going to be cynical about it for no reason.
