DOGE and the Social Security Agency

Personally, I think that the U.S. DOGE Service has always primarily been an effort by Shadow President Elon Musk to seize control of several tools of government for his own benefit and to direct government contracts to his own businesses. But many people — including a number generally believed to be serious — continue to believe that DOGE is truly aimed at increasing government efficiency. There is very little evidence to support that belief. Moreover, the failures of DOGE are easily documented. Today, I will look at one specific case: DOGE's involvement in the Social Security Administration.

Social Security has long been considered the third rail of U.S. politics. A great number of individuals rely on their monthly Social Security checks, and almost everyone of them votes. It is no surprise then that politicians fall over themselves to commit to protecting Social Security. At the same time, like Willy Sutton who robbed banks "Because that’s where the money is.", those hoping to cut government spending can't resist targeting Social Security. This leads to the magical incantation of promising to protect Social Security while cutting "waste, fraud, and abuse." The problem comes when significant waste, fraud, and abuse cannot be found. This is exactly what happened in the case of DOGE's involvement in Social Security.

Musk himself took the position that DOGE would only seek to weed out fraud, posting on X that "The goal of auditing the Social Security Administration is to stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans!" The problem, of course, is that Musk's expectation of "extreme levels of fraud" was conjured by his imagination rather than actual fact. One thing that should be understood is that despite Musk's claims, DOGE is not an auditing agency and it does not follow formal auditing practices. Instead, DOGE has employed young, inexperienced Musk admirers who are often computer specialists who know nothing about the agencies to which they are deployed. Moreover, computer experts or not, Musk's acolytes don't seem to have been experienced with the ancient version of COBOL being used by the Social Security Administration. Early on, Musk began publicly claiming that 150-year-olds were receiving Social Security checks and argued that this was evidence of fraud. However, as Wired reported, "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." Moreover, ten years ago, the SSA had stopped making payments to anyone older than 115. Therefore, Musk was wrong on multiple levels.

Many DOGE actions actually made things worse for the Social Security Administration. For instance, DOGE implemented a $1 spending limit on government-issued credit cards. This impacted employees throughout the government, but within the SSA it was particularly disruptive. According to the Washington Post, the credit card limit "left staffers unable to pay for phone bills, foreign-language interpreters, and basic office supplies". The Post also reported that "less than a dozen people are responsible for approving most new purchases made by 1,300 offices." The newspaper described employees being forced to buy their own pens, ration paper, and avoid printing because of the difficulty of purchasing toner.

In March, DOGE proposed that the Social Security Administration's phone service for filing claims be eliminated. Instead, those seeking Social Security Benefits would be required to use a website. This set off a panic among seniors, many of whom lined up at local SSA offices or flooded the agency’s phone lines. Angry constituents contacted their elected representatives in such numbers that many lawmakers demanded that the change be rescinded. After nearly a month, DOGE finally reversed itself and cancelled the change.

Many of the changes at the Social Security Administration took place under the leadership of Leland Dudek. Dudek had been a mid-level career employee at SSA with no executive experience. By his own admission, while in his GS-15 position, Dudek had started covertly cooperating with DOGE by providing documents, shifting funding, and "bullying" other employees. Dudek was subsequently placed on administrative leave. A post on LinkedIn attracted the attention of someone in authority, and Dudek was chosen to replace SSA Commissioner Michelle King when she resigned. Dudek, like many of those working within DOGE, was chosen for loyalty rather than competence.

After all the DOGE-initiated changes, SSA developed a backlog of 575,000 pending retirement claims. The reaction by SSA administrators was simply to ask their employees to work harder. The Huffington Post quoted an email by Stephen Evangelista, the SSA deputy commissioner for operations, as saying, "I am calling for all offices to do their very best to increase their [Retirement, Survivors, Health Insurance] clearances by at least 10 percent daily through the end of May". This request, of course, comes after staff cuts, highly-incentivized an encouraged retirements, and a shortage of basic office supplies. As former SSA commissioner Martin O’Malley is quoted as saying, "They’ve gotten rid of so many people so quickly that the wait times for everything are going in the wrong directions".

Last week, another DOGE failure came to light. As NextGov reported, DOGE is considering walking back anti-fraud checks for claims made over the phone. Based on a misunderstanding of the data, Musk made the claim that 40% of the agency’s calls were "fraudulent". Actually, what had been found is that 40% of direct deposit fraud comes from phone calls, not that 40% of the calls were fraudulent. Nevertheless, DOGE began requiring strict fraud checks which included a three-day hold on telephone claims. According to an internal SSA document obtained by NextGov, this slowed down retirement processing by 25%. More important, according to the document, only 1% of the claims were flagged as potentially fraudulent and "No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases". Ultimately, only two out of more than 110,000 claims were determined to have a high probability of being fraudulent and they may still turn out to be legitimate. A recent oversight report cited by NextGov shows that "Overall, fraud at SSA is a miniscule problem."

DOGE's activities at the Social Security Administration have disrupted the work of the agency, resulting in delayed processing of claims, long wait times, and frustrated citizens. Musk has repeatedly made baseless claims, and even his initial claim about "extreme levels of fraud" has no basis in fact. Far from increasing efficiency at the SSA, DOGE has had the opposite impact. In the meantime, DOGE employees have been accused of improperly accessing sensitive information. One DOGE employee, Antonio Gracias, made false claims about undocumented residents receiving Social Security numbers. This is a repeated pattern in which Musk or other associated with DOGE make false claims that provide considerable controversy but do nothing to either save money or increase efficiency. Now it appears that DOGE will use Social Security data to assist in identifying migrants for deportation. Such a use appears to violate federal law and is being challenged in court.

DOGE has objectively made things worse at the Social Security Administration, both for employees and for those who rely on its services. DOGE has discovered no significant amount of fraud and it has not increased efficiency. To the contrary, DOGE has actually had the opposite effect. Musk has made a number of false statements about the agency and DOGE's findings. The most significant fraud associated with SSA has been the fraud perpetrated by Musk and DOGE through their false claims and accusations.