Today 2 media sources which are held in ill repute have stories about Musk and Social Security fraud.
Did these outlets steal a march on the MSM?
I would expect the MSM to follow up on this story.
1)394 million names in the social security database. US population is ~330-340 million. Question are there 394 million active social security accounts? This needs to be looked into.
2) Musk:His post features a chart indicating there are more than 20 million listed with ages 100 and higher, including more than 3.9 million in the 130-139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140-149 range and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range.
Oh that definitely need investigation.
There was a thread on this board a week, or more, ago, about this. I watched Musk’s presentation in the Oval Office, where he talked about the apparent fraud, like his claims that people who appear to be 150 years old collecting benefits.
I said at that time, that, if there is fraud, as Musk claims, it needs to be dug out. That is one of the reasons I have been warning people on this board to have their papers in order: prove you are a US citizen, prove you have been paying FICA tax for decades. I floated the concept of “fixing” the cash flow imbalance in SS by finding some excuse to cut off some 10-15% of SS recipients, rather than reducing benefits for all the crusty old white guys, who are the core of the “base”.
Could the gap be the undocumented immigrants who are either still in the US or have left?
Undocumented immigrants paid nearly $26 billion into Social Security coffers in a single year, a new report has found.
New analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that undocumented residents paid ÂŁ25.7 billion into Social Security funds and $6 billion into Medicare in 2022; both programs that they are not entitled to use. In total, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion, or roughly $9,000 per person, in taxes in 2022.
Altogether, undocumented people paid a total of $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, with $59.4 billion paid to the federal government and the remaining $37.3 billion paid to state and local authorities. In 40 states, undocumented immigrants were found to pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living in the same state.
In addition, the 2020 census was administered to intentionally undercount this group so the US population could be much higher than 330-340 million.
So, when the drug rehab forced labor camps are established, and those people are used to replace the deportees, will they pay FICA tax, like the deportees did?
har…har…har Recall the case that was on the news wire last year: guy born in Canada, with one US citizen parent. Traditionally, the guy would be regarded as a citizen. He lived, worked, and paid FICA, as a citizen. When he tried to claim his SS benefit, SS refused, said he was not a citizen.
This is antidotal, and maybe it doesn’t happen often. My dad received RR retirement. He died on the 21st of the month. I called the RRR center and informed them of his death. They pulled that month’s payment back as they should have. The following month his RRR deposit showed up in his account again. I happened to be talking to his bank on another issue and when I pointed out that deposit, they said they would take care of it. The deposit was removed in a couple of days. I wonder how often that happens and for how long?
I bet both my parents, who died over 20 years ago, are still in the Social Security data base.
And no, they still don’t get Social Security checks. I was executor for both. When I called Social Security a couple of days after their death to report their death, Social Security already knew they had died.
It’s a fricking database. Information goes in and it stays there. I bet there’s a code in the database that indicates STOP SENDING CHECK. THEY’RE DEAD.
The ignorant leading the uninformed who are followed by the gullible.
Real auditors don’t report information until they have facts to back up their findings.
Meanwhile, we have an individual who gets billions of dollars from our government auditing the government. Slight conflict of interest there, don’t you think? Obviously, the current administration clearly isn’t serious about auditing anything.
The most likely reason there are so many names is that the deceased are kept on file as such to quickly catch and prevent fraud from using the SSN of the deceased.
It’s also important to know that when spouses claim benefits based on their partner’s earnings, that partner’s SSN is attached to those payments. When you have a May-December marriage (I have a couple of those among my tax clients), you’ll see proper payments on a SSN that has been dead for quite a while.
Social security records were first computerized in the 1950s, so having very old records in the system would not be surprising.
What is almost certainly a propaganda move is publicizing this data before doing any analysis at all to see what is going on.
There is an Inspector General report from 2023 that identifies this issue - and refers to an earlier IG report that also addressed this issue.
Their actual investigation showed that virtually none of these very old accounts were receiving benefits. so no, there is no material fraud going on here.
This is the kind of information you get when actual knowledgeable people do a proper investigation instead of a bunch of hacks poking around in places they shouldn’t be and don’t understand.
I find it odd that people are so quick to believe the original story - especially since Trump nominated at least two different SS commissioners during his first term than never made an issue of this.
An audit produced by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general last year found that from 2015 to 2022, the agency paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion, or less than 1 percent, in improper payments that usually involved recipients getting too much money.
We do not even know who is being honest outside of the Times. With the Times report on the inspector general we do not know how fully formed it was. I have more faith in the inspector general. Fired.