Donald Trump and Elon Musk are making unproven claims about millions of dead people still receiving Social Security payments, using these allegations as a reason to cut what they call “waste” and “fraud” from some of the nation’s biggest programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Their goal is to free up money to fund massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
Despite promising during his campaign that his administration wouldn’t touch Social Security and accusing Democrats of trying to end it, Trump and Musk are now laying the groundwork to reduce these programs. They’re aiming to cut over $1 trillion in federal spending, including on Social Security and health programs, as part of their effort to fund tax cuts for the rich.
On Wednesday, during an appearance on Fox News, Howard Lutnick (video below), the newly confirmed Commerce Secretary, praised Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He said the department would cut “a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse,” explaining, “We have almost $4 trillion of entitlements, and no one has looked at it before. You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicare and Medicaid is wrong, so he’s going to cut one trillion.”
Lutnick added, “Get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against Americans and we’re gonna raise a trillion dollars in revenue, and our objective, under Donald Trump, is to balance this budget.”
Lutnick also suggested that Trump could create an “External Revenue Service” and abolish the IRS, shifting the responsibility for federal taxes onto “outsiders.”
In a separate interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump promised that “Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something.” He continued, “It’s going to be strengthened” and assured that Medicare and Medicaid wouldn’t be affected.
However, at a rally in Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, Trump echoed Musk’s false claims about dead people collecting Social Security. Trump said, “If you take all of those numbers off, because they’re obviously fraudulent, or incompetent, we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80, 70, and 90, but not 200 years old.”
Earlier this week, Musk wrote on social media that “having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.” He went on, “Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second.”
Musk’s claims about Social Security are based on misunderstandings of the program’s software. Social Security runs on an older system using the COBOL programming language, which doesn’t handle dates in the same way as modern software. According to a 2024 report by the Inspector General, less than 1 percent of Social Security benefits are paid out improperly. In fact, there are fewer than 90,000 beneficiaries in the U.S. over the age of 99, out of a population of over 330 million.
The government has already begun to recover improper payments, including more than $31 million mistakenly paid to deceased people. The Treasury Department estimates it will recover $215 million over the next three years, a far cry from Musk’s $1 trillion goal.
To meet Musk’s target of cutting $1 trillion or more, the government would have to make deep cuts to important programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and even the Department of Defense, as well as raise taxes. The national debt is projected to increase by $20 trillion in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Meanwhile, Trump is pushing for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. House Republicans are proposing a budget that would add $4.5 trillion to the deficit through tax cuts, along with an additional $2 trillion in cuts to “mandatory” spending programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and food assistance.
Watch Lutnick’s interview in the clip below from Fox News:
Lutnick: Think about it, we have almost $4 trillion of entitlements and no one has looked at it before. You know social security is wrong, you know medicaid and medicare are wrong so he's going to cut one trillion… pic.twitter.com/hpFobg6FW4
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 20, 2025
A plan negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson and supported by Trump calls for cutting $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade to help fund part of the president’s proposed tax cuts. Separately, Trump has promised to exempt Social Security benefits from income taxes, which would cost the program more than $2 trillion over the next decade, with no clear plan for covering those costs elsewhere.
