“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
-Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform
When Norquist said that in 2001, he represented a faction of the Republican Party that favored big tax cuts and a radical shrinking of the federal government. Today, that faction rules not only the GOP but Congress and the executive branch in Washington. The Trump administration’s moves to slash the size of the federal workforce, close down programs, shut off funding and sell off buildings represent the end game of this philosophy of government.
One way to shrink or transform a federal program is to tell the public that it isn’t working, or that it is riddled with fraud, waste and abuse. And that seems to be the game plan for Social Security.
I’m hard-pressed to find for any other reason that Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to repeat the falsehood that 150-year-old people are receiving Social Security benefits. This simply is not true. This “I see dead people” discovery by Musk’s DOGE crew stems from an unimportant quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system. As Wired magazine explains:
… [The program] was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.
Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mètre.
These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.
Trump’s hand-picked acting SSA commissioner has confirmed this. The government’s own research found that from 2015 to 2022, the SSA paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, and that less than 1% of that was in improper payments, mostly to living people. Not to say that’s OK, but in a system this massive mistakes are made - whether in a government program or the private sector. And - should the SSA get off COBOL? Absolutely. The agency has been working for years on a technology modernization program, but it’s been hampered by relentless administrative budget cuts that have made it difficult for the agency to make progress on that goal, and other efforts to improve operations.
Yet the president doubled down on the dead people getting benefits in his State of the Union address this week:
“. . . We're also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love and rely on.
Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly.”
Trump’s insistence on repeating this charge even after it has been debunked is striking. So are Musk’s continued recitation of it, and his revival of the ancient charge that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (It is not.). If you say these things frequently enough, and with large megaphones of the type possessed by Trump and Musk, a sizable portion of the American public will believe it, and that is very dangerous.
Now add to the mix the administration’s recent purge of an entire level of senior management and its plans to downsize the SSA workforce. The agency already is understaffed and struggles to serve the public; further cuts could lead to a real meltdown. The agency is already the most overworked and demoralized of nearly any across the federal government.
Take a listen to what Martin O’Malley, who served as SSA commissioner in the Biden administration, told the PBS NewsHour this week:
What’s the end game here? I worry that it is the partial privatization of Social Security - outsourcing functions to the private sector or using artificial intelligence to interact with the public. We don’t know at this point where this would start, or where it would end. Could privatization extend to actual benefits? At this point, it’s impossible to rule out.
Here’s what we do know: shrinking the public-facing staff in field offices and on the toll-free phone line will have the largest negative impact on the most vulnerable people. These are the folks who are trying to apply for disability benefits or Supplemental Security income, or navigating complex questions around survivor benefits.
The creation of Social Security (along with Medicare and Medicaid) has had a profound effect on the economic well-being of seniors. In 1966, 28.5 percent of Americans aged 65 and older had family incomes below the federal poverty threshold; by 2019, that number had dropped to 8.9 percent—a stunning public policy achievement that has helped millions live independently with financial security.
This is no time to carve up our most important social insurance program.
Join me for a webinar on the future of long-term care
Join me for a webinar on March 11th on the challenges facing our long-term care system in the United States.
Sponsored by the National Academy of Social Insurance, the free webinar will feature top experts on U.S. long-term care, with comments on lessons learned from reforms that the Dutch have made to their system
The webinar will accompany the release of a new report, “Promising Policy Innovations to Make Person-Centered Aging Affordable for All Despite Fiscal and Workforce Constraints: Lessons from the Netherlands,” by Academy Member Ben Veghte.
I’ll be moderating the panel. Speakers will include:
Ben Veghte, director of the WA Cares Fund, which is the state-sponsored LTC insurance plan now in place in Washington state.
Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute
Narda Ipakchi, vice president of policy & programs at the Scan Foundation
Nicole Jorwic, chief of advocacy, Caring Across Generations
The webinar will take place on March 11th at 11:30am eastern time. It is free and open to the public. Use the button below to register.
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