The two certainties in life are death and taxes. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) recently discovered that the living are paying taxes to the dead. In fact, the agency recently eliminated a staggering 12.3 million Social Security recipients who would be over 120 years old if they were still alive today.
In March 2015, authorities were alerted that the Social Security database had not been updated for 6.5 million Americans over the age of 112. There were, in fact, only 35 Americans at or over the age of 112 in 2015. The Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) believed that some Social Security numbers (SSNs) were being illegally used to open bank accounts, apply for jobs, and report wages. Over 4,000 E-Verify employment checks were sent out to people allegedly over the age of 112, and tens of thousands of false wage reports were used with these SSNs.
Ten years ago, when the matter made headlines, the Social Security Administration claimed it would be too costly to update its electronic database to create a death master file. The SSA would have needed to manually match death reports against current Social Security benefit recipients and input findings in an electronic file called Numident.
The Inspector General (IG) found that from 2008 to 2012, not a single death was recorded on the Numident. “SSA did not establish controls to annotate death information onto the Numident record of number holders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies and were likely deceased,” the IG stated in its report.
This has been a massive waste of funds. In one example, from 2006 to 2011, SSNs assigned to people over the age of 112 accounted for $3.1 billion in wages, tips, and self-employment income. Lawmakers and regulators were aware of the problem but failed to act.
The issue received bipartisan support in 2015, although now it has become a partisan issue as Elon Musk and DOGE are involved. This issue has been costly. When the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs came out, the SBA issued 3,095 loans to borrowers over 115, as they were marked as alive in the database. In one instance, a 157-year-old requested and received $36,000 in federal loans.
DOGE spent 11 weeks investigating the matter and finally marked 12.3 million individuals as “deceased.” Around 7.2 million were between 120 and 139 years of age, 4.8 million were between 140 and 159, and 124,000 SSNs were over the age of 160. It took only 11 weeks to correct a known issue that had been permitted to occur for a decade.
DOGE is still investigating, as there are “complex cases” where individuals have numerous birth dates on file. Removing migrants from Social Security will follow. This move comes after DOGE cut 7,000 positions at the Social Security Administration. Reports state that these 12.3 million Americans were only receiving a small portion of funds, as if that is acceptable. Taxpayers are monitored and patted down annually to ensure they’re reporting every penny of their earnings, while the government spends what they collect unchecked. Negligence is sugar-coated as oversight, as bloated governments cannot function properly.
