I have been critical of the "bull in the China Closet" methods DOGE has employed since their inception. My guess is that trumpster wanted a blitzkrieg affect at the onset of the program.
A lot of folks are worried because to reduce the "number" automatically meant they were taking away granny's check. Having worked for the government for many years, I knew there was a lot of slush in record keeping of anything that big. There just has to be. Johnny doesn't report granny's death and just pockets the money. OR granny dies and there is no family to report it.
When working gangs, we would routinely find social security checks that belonged to somebody's granny in the house. Granny (or even a neighbor or other family member) got dead years back. Not only did they not report it, but they were also using it as their "income" which of course they didn't report.
These are the reported stats. Getting into an argument about the numbers is stupid. Everyone with a story in the past two days have the same numbers. I consider these to be as valid as if pedojoe put them out.
In a statement on X, DOGE announced, "For the past two weeks, Social Security has been conducting a major cleanup of its records. As part of its ongoing mission, DOGE continues to focus on cutting government expenditure. According to government records, as of March 8, the Social Security database listed 1,357,967 people between the ages of 150 and 159 as alive.
The story goes on to say that by mid March, this number had decreased by 186,415 to 1,171,552. In total, 3,261,057 individuals were reclassified as deceased.
It sounds like they're actually doing their due diligence to make sure the oldest person in the world isn't still alive and collecting. I'll accept that. And it sounds like this is the way it'll be with Medicare and Medicaid. While the existence of these records does not necessarily imply that benefits were still being paid, it highlights the FWA (Fraud, Waste, and Abuse), or simply inefficiencies in the bureaucracy. Also, with that many, I'd say there was systemic inefficiencies or abuse.
Welfare is ran by the states (which is usually part of the counties), so DOGE would have to look into the counties. It may be interesting if folks will have to "reapply" for services. That looks different in every county so the feds will have a problem getting to it.
